


secretly you love this, do you even wanna go free

by Goumaden



Category: Persona 5
Genre: (tfw no ps4), Banter, Hand Jobs, M/M, Minor Kitagawa Yusuke & Sakura Futaba, Minor Nijima Makoto/Okumura Haru, Not Canon Compliant - Persona 5: The Royal, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Ten Years Later, but the only tools used in the fixing are a baseball bat and a roll of duct tape, crime!, disgustingly pretentious cocktails, heists and heist accessories, if you squint really hard this is a fix-it fic, thievery!, train facts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24899029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goumaden/pseuds/Goumaden
Summary: "You look like an international jewel thief”, Futaba had said as he got ready. “You’re going to show up to the front gates and the security guards are going to give you a good once-over before letting you in. They’ll know that you’re a filthy dirty criminal, but they’ll let you inside anyway because your pants are too tight to fit any stolen antiques into.”Akira winked back at her through his own reflection in the mirror. “That’s exactly the look I’m gunning for.”Ten years after the dissolution of the Metaverse, Akira Kurusu still refuses to admit that "being a gentleman thief" isn't an acceptable career choice.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Kurusu Akira & Sakura Futaba, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 278





	1. Chapter 1

The party’s already in full swing by the time Akira creeps in through the back door. He treads silently through an empty hallway, ducks, smoke-like, beneath a velvet rope, and joins the queue of people waiting for the nearest bathroom.

When the closest in line turns to him, a half-formed question on her lips, he shrugs conspiratorially. “Thought I’d find an empty bathroom in the closed-off part of the mansion and could skip the wait. Guess it’s my fault for taking one too many champagne glasses.” She laughs politely, the disinterested and humorless chuckle of the wealthy, and then turns away to check her phone. 

_Good_ , thinks Akira. _I’ve already made a successful entrance._ He grins privately to himself, anticipation throbbing through his veins. _Tonight’s host is never going to know what hit him_. 

When he gets into the bathroom, he immediately dials Futaba. “Thirty seconds, Alibaba. Target location?” 

Futaba’s eating potato chips on the other end of the line. Akira can hear her crunching. “Third floor, master bedroom. Should be deserted. I’m sending an infiltration route to your phone.” She idles for a few seconds, suspiciously silent, and Akira narrows his eyes. “What are you not telling me?”

“He’s got a _really_ nice laptop up there.” Futaba’s voice is casually innocent. 

“And?”

“It just came out last month. It’s lightweight, portable, and top of the line! This thing has enough RAM to model every droplet of a human sneeze, Thief Lord.” 

_There it is_ , Akira thinks. _Futaba wants a new toy._ “I’m not stealing it for you.” 

“You could make an exception, just this once. It’s not like we get _paid_ to do this, after all. Don’t we have expenses we should be recouping? Like the overwhelming cost of your hair gel?” 

Akira smoothes back his slicked-aside bangs, suddenly self-conscious. “First of all, there’s nothing stopping you from getting a _real_ job. Second of all, I’m still not doing it. Ask Haru and Makoto for your birthday.” 

“Booooooooo. You’re getting old, Thief Lord. Old and _boring_.” Futaba grouses mournfully. Akira can hear her typing away furiously as she hangs up. His phone buzzes as soon as the call is terminated—an anonymous message detailing the schematics of the western-style mansion where this evening’s charity gala is being held. It’s opulent, to be sure, a multi-tiered puff pastry plumped full of the cream of society and decorated to the nines. If this were a palace heist, he would have already stolen several of the works of art adorning the walls, pulled off jewels sparkling on the necklaces of guests, and pocketed the pearlescent bathroom soap dispenser. 

_But it’s not, and it never will never be again._ The unsatisfying truth of the matter is that the Metaverse dissipated a decade ago. Seeking justice was no longer as easy as simply changing someone’s heart. In order to continue on as he has been, there’s only one thing he has eyes for—the only thing worth stealing in this new era. The incontrovertible evidence of someone’s wrongdoing. 

(Plus, his pants _were_ too tight to fit the soap dispenser into. Sometimes he deeply missed the Metaverse.)

He glides out of the bathroom, route to the third floor already memorized, and homogenizes himself into the well-dressed crowd with ease. It’s all a dance at this point—ooze charm, hand off a business card or three in casual conversation, grab a miniature champagne glass off a tray to idly sip from. Akira’s made it halfway to the staircase when he sees _him_. He freezes, suddenly a teenager again, a thief pinned to a casino wall by police floodlights with nowhere left to vanish. 

The man smiles, laughs, and holds up his camera to photograph a couple, and Akira relaxes. His hair is the right shade of dusty brown, but the style’s all wrong—it’s longer, and swept delicately into a tiny low side ponytail that barely reaches his shoulder. The front pieces aren’t pulled back, hanging freely to frame his face. His bangs are too short, only eyebrow length, and slightly swept away from one violet eye—

 ** _Violet_** _eyes. Of course it’s not him. It’s been ten years now, hasn’t it?_

Akira still isn’t willing to admit the reason to himself why he still sees ghosts—ONE ghost— after all this time. He pushes the thought from his head as he easily sidesteps a waiter and casually circles, closer and closer, to the second floor staircase. On his third pass, he hazards another stare at the camera-holding man. _Reporter? Photographer? Editor?_ Akira can’t discern which.

The man catches him staring, and raises an immaculately-groomed eyebrow. _Shit. Way to look like a demented fucking weirdo, Kurusu_ , the rational part of his brain thinks. The irrational part of his brain has been concocting a hideous plan something along the lines of _He’s hot? What the fuck? Get his phone number. Solve all of your teenage emotional trauma by having a one night stand with the doppelganger of your dead detested nemesis. Get his mouth on your cock and then never speak to him again. It’s cheaper than therapy._

_Stop LOOKING at him_ , the rational part of Akira’s brain reiterates. He reluctantly tears his gaze away and focuses deeply instead on a platter of canapés on a server’s tray. Mini quiches, it seems. Ham and swiss? The flaky crust on the one furthest to the right is burnt, a dark smudge in a sea of eggy golden brown. 

“Hello”, the man who bears a striking resemblance to Goro Akechi says pleasantly, about two inches away from Akira’s ear canal. Akira jumps, startled out of his skin, and drops his empty champagne glass. 

(He deftly catches it with his other hand before it hits the ground. It’s one of the many perks of his skill set.)

“I don’t mean to intrude”, the other says, with a placating smile usually reserved for toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, “but were you on the photo list?” He gestures to the camera hanging around his neck. “I don’t recall any celebrities that match your description, unfortunately, but you seem to be giving me quite the dirty look every time I photograph a guest.” 

Akira’s brain switches to bullet time, managing to note that 1) this reporter really _is_ the spitting image of his deranged would-be murderer, 2) he wants to climb him like a tree, 3) this says a lot about him psychologically that he isn’t willing to own up to, and 4) it’s time to never mention any of that ever, not even once, if he wants to 5) GET HIS PHONE NUMBER AND HOOK UP WITH HIM. 

He brushes the tangle of dark hair falling into his eye away from his face, unleashes his most killer, makes-girls-go-weak-in-the-knees smile, and turns to face the photographer. “Excuse me?”

“I can take a few of you now, if you’d like. Who are you? An Instagram influencer? A newcomer to daytime television?”

Akira puts on a proper show of feeling up his own ass for a business card before suddenly “remembering” that they were in his front pocket the whole time. “Nothing of the sort, actually. I’m a corporate marketing representative for one of this evening’s sponsors. Have you heard of Junes?” He extends his falsified card full of fake credentials, the other man takes it.

“Ren Amamiya”, he murmurs, staring at the tiny rectangle of cardstock with an inscrutable expression on his face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amamiya-kun. I am Seiichiro Fukiya. As you may have already deduced, I work as a contract photographer for a tabloid website.” 

“Do you have a card as well?” Akira inquiries politely. _One with your contact information? Preferably one that says “I’M SINGLE!” in bold, capital letters?_

Fukiya lets out a charming laugh. The resemblance to he-who-shall-remain-nameless is downright _painful_. “Not on me at the moment. I’m afraid I’ve run out.” 

_At the very least, Fukiya isn’t a common surname_ , Akira idly muses, already plotting out how he’s going to explain to Sojiro and Futaba how he’s boning and/or planning his wedding to Goro Akechi II: Gaiden. “Here. Let me see my card again for a second.” When Fukiya passes it back to him, he scrawls his real cell number on the back with a flourish. “That’s my personal number”, he explains. “If you just call the card number you’ll be assigned to someone in the marketing department at random.” _And none of them will be me, because I don’t actually work there! Ha ha! Just a little fun fact about myself._

“Thank you. I appreciate the gesture.” Fukiya pockets the card again with an odd, tight little smile. “While it was lovely to meet you, I really must be going.” He pauses, and raises his camera. “Ah, but first, may I take your photo? I’m sure anyone would appreciate a memento of their time spent here tonight.” 

Akira’s winking in the photo, a sly, catlike grin curling the edges of his mouth, champagne glass still in hand. He _does_ look like some sort of bastardous jewel thief when Fukiya shows him the photo—Futaba, as always, was right. Fukiya turns to leave, and Akira strains to keep his tone nonchalant as he waves farewell with a “Good to meet you. Thanks for the picture.” Then he adds, in an only _slightly_ desperate attempt to get his phone number, “Can you text it to me later?” 

Fukiya heads to take a photo of a chatty young heiress halfway across the room, and Akira finally escapes up the stairs to the second floor. After ducking into an empty sitting room at the party’s edge, he hoists the window sash open, stepping feather light onto the ledge. He grabs the stonework above him and _swings_ , somersaulting up to the third floor in a graceful backflip. He’s cloaked thoroughly by the darkness as he slinks along the outside wall. One, two, three, four rooms to the left, and then he pulls on his favorite pair of well-worn black gloves and effortlessly picks the window lock.

The master bedroom is pitch dark and empty. Akira sweeps it visually before entering, determining hiding places, escape routes, and a clear path through the owner’s belongings carelessly scattered across the room. _What a slob._ He alights silently on the carpeted floor, crossing to the far side of the room, where he delicately lifts an oil painting off its mount to reveal the safe behind it. 

“Hello, gorgeous.” He breathes. 

And it’s _this_ feeling that never gets old, that he’ll never grow tired of, that will keep sucking him back into heists and plots and coloring his life with interest and intrigue until the day he dies. He’s never been able to let go of the Metaverse, and even after its dissolution, the Metaverse has never entirely been able to relinquish him from its grasp. Much like Morgana had been granted a physical form, Akira had inherited a little something _extra_ based on the world’s cognition of him as the leader of the Phantom Thieves. It’s not much, but there’s a reason he can still pick any lock with ease after all these years, see in the dark and visualize security camera blindspots, and move through the shadows with an undetectable, otherworldly grace. 

Talents were meant to be used. If hearts could no longer be stolen, evidence of wrongdoing and political corruption was a viable alternative. The Phantom Thieves carefully and quietly lived on. 

Akira has just clicked open the fifth number on the sixteen-digit safe dial when he hears the faint tread of footsteps coming down the hall towards him. He replaces the painting soundlessly and ducks behind an overstuffed armchair in the corner of the room, folding himself tightly into a crouch to better conceal himself. 

The door opens. Light from the hallway streams in, and then it closes again. 

Akira waits patiently. 

And waits.

And waits.

And _waits_.

Whoever it is, they’re up to something. There’s definitely someone in the room with him—Akira hears soft, even breathing, and the occasional brush of deft hands against the wall or a similar hard surface. But the lights remain off, the bedroom remains dark, and the intruder remains measuredly, conspicuously silent. As if they don’t want to be caught. _As if they shouldn’t be there in the first place._ What the _hell_? Akira silently eases himself out of his curled-up crouch and shifts into a squat. He peers around the edge of the chair, and—

He hears it before he sees it. The sharp, audible _click_ of a gun’s safety being released.

“Come out with your hands up”, a voice says levelly, “or I put a bullet in your fucking brain.” 

Akira, who would very much prefer to not have a bullet in his fucking brain, does as he’s told. _But there’s more to it than that_ , he thinks. Something’s been tugging on him for a while now. The familiarity of the voice in the dark with no visual cues to distort it, for one. The fact that Seiichiro Fukiya approached _him_ at the party, and not the other way around, for another. Third, deep red overlaid with a blue tint will always create purple. And when he really, _truly_ thinks about it....

 _Oh._

“It didn’t work well the first two times”, he says cheerfully, emerging with both hands casually laced together behind his head. “But they say that three is a lucky number, so why don’t you give it another go?” The other person turns on the bedside lamp and Akira rapidly blinks, waiting for his eyes to adjust from darkness to the dim light. He already knows who’s holding the gun. He can’t believe he didn’t realize it sooner. 

“Hi again.” Akira adds eloquently, because his brain has shorted out completely in every possible semblance of “information processing” and he really doesn’t know what to do or how to react to Goro _fucking_ Akechi’s most elaborate betrayal yet. A thousand emotions are swirling through his head. Relief, first and foremost, at the fact that he lived through Shido’s Palace. Anger, at the fact that he never thought to fucking mention that he lived, and _completely vanished_ from Akira’s life. A shittier and far more immature type of anger that not only did Akechi fake his own death, he did a much better job at it and kept up the con longer than Akira himself did a decade ago. Some weird sort of wistful longing, at what could have happened that year, but never did. An out-of-place sense of horniness that Akechi became _stupid_ hot in his twenties. More anger. Fear that Akechi really _was_ going to splatter his brains out over the carpet this time, and Futaba was going to inherit all of his money and spend it on Featherman R action figures. A bit more horniness. Mortification that he had _openly hit on Akechi_ , and _Akechi knew that he had done it_. Relief again. Back to anger. 

“Can I call you Seiichiro now?” he finally asks, unable to resist the temptation of poking feral bastards with sticks. Goro Akechi stares at him with hollowed out, lifeless eyes. “Fukiya-kun? Honey? Darling?”

Akechi looks liable to bite him and give him rabies. His finger twitches near the trigger of his pistol— _Oh fuck_ , Akira thinks—but he takes a deep breath and pastes on the most vapid, ineffectual smile that Akira’s ever seen. “I’m afraid I have no idea who you are or what you’re talking about.” 

“Bull _shit_.” Akira counters. 

“Are you mistaking me for someone else? I don’t want you to embarrass you by allowing your incorrect recognition to continue.” 

Akechi lies like a freshly steam-cleaned carpet, all pristine, pillow-soft words and phrases. No stains, no weak spots. Akira _knows_ this. He closes his eyes, mentally ups the ante, and bluffs. 

“My phone’s recording right now.” 

“I’m really not sure why that matters.”

“It usually doesn’t.” Akira shrugs, a simple, easy gesture. He unlaces his fingers from behind his head and drops his arms to his sides. “However, should I end up shot dead tonight, I would imagine that Futaba would feel inclined to download this particular evening’s recording from the cloud and review it.” 

The corner of Akechi’s smile twitches. “And?”

“I’ve already dribbled enough context clues over the course of the evening for her to determine your real identity and your fake identity, which is more than enough to make your afterlife a living hell.” 

Akechi lowers his gun, and Akira congratulates himself on his ability to bullshit garbage out of his mouth until he realizes that Akechi’s laughing, a horrible, rasping noise that sounds, quite frankly, deranged. 

It’s kind of hot. 

_Uh-oh._

“Akira Kurusu.” Goro states flatly. “You could not possibly have any _less_ of an idea of what I’ve done with my fucking life in the past ten years. Go ahead and tell Sakura-san whatever you want. It won’t make one _iota_ of a difference.” 

“That’s ominous.” _Are those footsteps outside? Down the hall?_ “Are you implying you.... Wait a second, do you hear that?” 

“No.” Goro says, blinking. 

“That’s fine, it just means you’re getting old and going deaf. Hurry up and...” _Out the window? Too risky. Under the bed? The frame isn’t tall enough. Behind the chair? There’s only room for one person._ “Closet. Now.” 

“I’m sorry?” Akechi inquiries politely, as Akira yanks him bodily by the arm, gun and all, and pulls him into the tiny closet, latching the door behind them just as the door to the room swings open again. 

“Mmmmph”, says Akechi this time, but Akira’s already covered his mouth with one gloved hand. “Sssssshhhhhh,” he breathes up against Akechi’s ear, a soft, continuous exhale.

“ _Mmmmmphh_ ”, Akechi reiterates, but very quietly this time, and then he falls silent. The closet is stiflingly small—they’re pressed nearly flush against each other, chest to chest and thigh to thigh. Goro ended up with a good two and a half inches of height on him, Akira dully notes in some far-off part of his brain. _Damn Sojiro for fueling my high school caffeine addiction. I always knew it would bite me in the ass._

_But still, if it means I can..._

Akira leans in and rests his chin on the other man’s shoulder, staring through the slats in the closet door at the bedroom’s newest occupants. It’s a woman and a man, fuzzy in the dim light and lavishly dressed. _They_ don’t seem to be concerned with being discovered. They’ve left the door wide open and the lamp on, and all they’re doing is leaning up against each other drunkenly, luxuriating in the cheap, tipsy thrill of a stolen kiss. 

“Be glad you’re facing the other way”, he murmurs in Goro’s ear. “This is some seriously low-grade amateur pornography. I doubt they’re even going to get past the ‘tender embrace’ stage.”

Goro, in response, threads his fingers through Akira’s hair and _yanks_ his head off his shoulder with such vehement force that Akira feels his neck snap and dies instantly. 

(He may be overreacting, just slightly.)

“Don’t _touch_ me.” Akechi hisses under his breath, the universal warning sign given off by all species of venomous snakes. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Joker?” 

_Joker_. For a moment, he’s too stunned to respond. It’s been years since he’s heard that particular nickname. Longer still since he’s heard it in that particular voice, from those particular lips. Akira swallows, throat suddenly desiccated. Every single one of his witty comebacks dies on his tongue. He feels an inexplicable and overpowering wave of sentiment wash over him, the kind almost exclusively reserved for wobbling week-old kittens and the birth of your first child. He knows, in that moment, that he is well and truly fucked. 

Goro Akechi slides his hand up between them and jabs him, _hard_ , in the solar plexus, and he doesn’t even feel it. That’s how fucked he is. 

“Get off.” Akechi repeats softly. “I loathe you. I _despise_ you. You have three seconds before I blow your fucking brains out, because I would rather face the inexorable murder charges that will result from this particular crime than spend a single moment further in your company.”

“With what gun?” Akira asks a bit-less-than-innocently, mainly to bring attention to the fact that he’s already stolen it and Goro hasn’t noticed yet. 

Akechi’s lips thin into a tight line, visible to Akira even in the dark. He gropes behind himself for the doorknob, outside interference clearly preferable at this point to his current company, and Akira whispers “Hey, hey hey hey _hey—_ ”,

He catches Akechi’s wrist in his own, gloves on bare skin, and squeezes tightly enough that the joint cracks and pops. 

“Bad start. Okay? Let’s try again.”

A pause, followed by a deep, deliberate breath.

“I’m happy that you’re not dead.” Before Goro can say anything, Akira presses a finger to his lips. 

“That’s it, Akechi. That’s _all_. No hard feelings, no pity. I’m not going to moan and dote on you or swear undying vengeance against your entire bloodline unless you specifically ask for it.” And Akechi’s dead still, silent as his own grave, so he barrels onward. “I won’t tell anyone you’re alive. I won’t ask what shady shit you were up to in this room. I’ll just leave, and we can pretend this never happened.” Akira removes his hand. “Acceptable terms?”

“Not really, no.” Goro says, mouth twisting into a frown that borders on petulant. “I have no reason to trust anything you’ve just said. Moreover, you have no reason to have any faith in my actions. It’s downright idiotic of you to gloss over my past track record in favor of the blind idealization of a potential friendship between us.” 

“Hmmm.” Akira replies nonchalantly, completely and utterly unwilling to admit that that was exactly what he had just been doing. “Well. If you’re into an extended period of voyeurism in a closet, then _—_ ” 

“Don’t misunderstand. I _am_ taking your offer.” Akechi’s voice is quietly lofty now. Patronizingly smug. The epitomical mask of the sainted, benevolent detective prince. Akira considers shooting him with his own gun. “But it’s a poor one, and I expected more from you.” 

“Thanks.” Akira replies. He means it sarcastically, a scathing commentary on Akechi’s pretentiousness, but it comes out embarrassingly and heartwarmingly sincere. He coughs. For a moment, his heart feels a bit too tight in his chest. Akechi is warm and solid against him—his hair smells like lavender and cedarwood, something sterile and pungent faintly underlying it. His lips were soft, earlier, when Akira had touched them. He wishes that he hadn’t worn gloves tonight. Some long-buried, wistful emotion bubbles up in his throat, but he swallows it, just like the disgusting freak he is. 

“If you want to get out of here, there’s an attic hatch at the top of this closet.” Akira finally says, firmly bracing both of his palms on Akechi’s shoulders. “Give me a leg up and I’ll pull you through.” Goro mumbles something incredulously hateful beneath his breath, but he reluctantly laces his fingers together and allows Akira to use his cupped hands as a stirrup-springboard. (And if Akira shows off just a bit too much pulling Akechi upwards? If Akira winks at him, upside down, dangling from the hatch by his knees as he crosses his arms to form a springboard of his own? _Well_. That has no ulterior motive in the slightest.) 

It’s easy to reach the roof after that, and from there, the fire escape. The silence as they descend is strangely comfortable, Akira thinks. It feels cozy and lived-in, the well-worn ease of partners in crime. A momentary mutual and absolute understanding between them. Akira has ten thousand questions burning a hole through his tongue, but remains carefully silent. If he speaks now, he fears that he’ll spook Akechi away forever—how is he supposed to even _remotely_ navigate a conversation with a wild, jittery predator who has a pathological fear of any sort of emotional intimacy? When they reach the ground, dropping noiselessly to the garden lawn behind the mansion, he pauses. Chooses his words as carefully as he can. “That’s my real phone number, you know.” 

“I know.” Akechi turns away from him, expression oddly melancholic in the dark. “Goodbye, Akira Kurusu.” 

Akira watches him go. 

He stands there for a while longer, until the gala behind him goes dark and quiet. And then he stands there further still, mourning the curious loss of something that was never his to begin with and never could be. 

When he finally gets back to his apartment, on the last train of the evening, he realizes he still has Akechi’s pistol. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe that Goro "fuckign" Akechi got me to upload 4000 words of text to a website.
> 
> This fic was inspired by bufudynamic's [older PT designs on twitter](https://twitter.com/bufudynamics/status/1091524121605914624?s=20), as well as by Xov's post-game P5 character study [death of choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22962523). Please check out their work if you enjoyed this!
> 
> Futaba and Akira's new codenames are pretty obviously from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Akechi's pseudonym is the culprit from one of the earliest Kogoro Akechi short stories, who ends up trapped in his own lies by the famous detective due to his excessive pride in his intellectual capabilities. Take that as you will. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! ♪(´▽｀)


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Akira wakes up with a pounding headache, brain throbbing against his temples at precisely the same tempo someone is using to hammer on his front door. He groans, still sticky-eyed and bleary from sleep, and manages to lift his phone off the charger to check the time just as Futaba lets herself into his apartment.

_2 PM. Well, fuck. Blew that one._

He rolls over and utilizes his last few seconds to feign a sweet, innocent sleep—hands stretched out just so, hair carefully tousled, eyelashes brushing daintily against his cheek. It’s a masterfully charming appeal. No one could ever _dream_ of disturbing such a heartfelt and earnest slumber. 

Futaba enters his bedroom and promptly whacks him over the head with the paperback book on his nightstand. 

“Good morning!” She declares cheerfully. “You’re three hours late to Sunday breakfast, which means you’ve forfeited all of your Yon-Germain pastries.”

Akira cracks one eye open vengefully and scowls. Futaba, completely unperturbed, hops up on the bed to sit on his back. 

“You have fifteen minutes to wake up and get over to my apartment before I pour all of the nasty disgusting swamp juice you ordered down the drain.” She’s grinning now, tone far too gleeful. “This is a hostage situation.” 

Akira looks up at her morosely. “Futaba, I’m so old. There's no way I can get out of bed in fifteen minutes. My head hurts and I’m not even _hung over_. I didn’t even _drink_ anything last night. I have a _headache_ from the mere _continuation_ of my existence.” 

“That’s called a caffeine addiction.” Futaba replies. She runs her hands through Akira’s hair, absent-mindedly scratching him behind the ears like a shitty cat. "Hmmmm… how about this? I may be holding your weekly health drink over your head as collateral, but I’m willing to broker the other conditions I’ve laid out.”

“My aojiru is an innocent civilian and should be left out of the negotiations.” Akira grouses as he swats her hands away.

Futaba, completely undeterred, tugs on the shell of his ear. “I'll give you twenty-five minutes instead of fifteen, but you bring the _good_ French press with you when you come over.” 

“Release the juice from your clutches, vile demon. Do you even know how much it costs to get it delivered from Shibuya?” 

Akira—much to his personal regret—is well and truly awake now. He fakes a stretch to shift into a better position and then launches his counterattack by rolling over into a tangled twist of sheets. Futaba is sent tumbling off him in a whirl of fiery hair.

_It's been about three years now since she gave up on dyeing her roots_ , Akira recalls. She'd cited the growing cost of her hair dye at the time, as well as the monotony of monthly touch-ups and the seemingly permanent orange stain in her sink. When Ann got back from London and saw the grown-out "Halloween Horror", as she had dubbed it, she threw a fit. She locked Futaba into her and Shiho's apartment for eight hours and only allowed her to emerge the next morning with properly gradiated ombré hair, the natural black that had grown out to her chin sliding into a few short, sweet inches of deep red before shading up through a brilliant sunset until the original orange reached her mid-back, waist, and hips.

It was still a good look on her. Not that Akira felt inclined to compliment Futaba when she was in his apartment solely to wreak havoc, but….

“Vile demon?" Futaba inquiries indignantly from the floor. "At the very least in this hypothetical, I should be the final boss. I'm more suited to being the level 99 super-ultimate-bonus boss when you really think about it, though." Akira hears, rather than sees, the "beep" of her starting a stopwatch on her phone. “Alright, the negotiations are over. The clock starts... Now!” 

Akira moans and buries his head underneath a pillow as Futaba squeaks “Help me, Akira!” in a tiny, burbling high pitched voice. 

“Okay, okay. The point has been taken. Please stop pretending to impersonate my gross kale drinks. I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes with coffee.” _You downright horrid evil goblin. Curse of my bloodline._ “Now get _out_.”

He slowly extricates himself from the bed as Futaba leaves, feeling akin to a metaphorical snail torn from its protective shell, cursed to trail a copious amount of slime across the floor as it drags itself through a cruel and unfeeling world.

Akira easily stands up and makes his way into the bathroom despite these profoundly deep and poetic thoughts. He washes his face; he brushes his teeth. He drags a few fingers through his hair, allowing fluffy bangs to flop down carelessly over one eye. There’s no need for fake glasses on his day off—today’s Sunday, so he’s not going to the office. Rummaging through his closet, he picks up the first three things he finds that vaguely match: a white t-shirt advertising some band he's never seen, a slightly crinkled black button-up, and dark red pants. (In retrospect, he only owns three colors in his closet. Which _is fine_. It's his signature look, and Futaba will _have_ to come around to respecting it eventually.)

Akira checks his watch as he rolls up the sleeves on the button-up—eight minutes left. _Shit._

He grabs his smaller French press first, tossing in a few pre-ground coffee scoops from a plastic sandwich bag with **“AKIRA: EMERGENCIES ONLY”** marked on the front in permanent marker. He pours boiling water from the tap straight over it, setting the unmixed mess on the counter to soak and over-extract itself to hell. _Making coffee this disrespectfully is definitely considered a war crime. God, Sojiro would snap my neck with his own two hands if he ever saw this level of blatant evil._ Akira can't help but shudder at the thought. Quickly, he mouths a silent prayer for forgiveness he knows he is unworthy of.

While the abomination percolates, he sets more boiling water aside to cool properly. He grabs his good coffee grinder and larger French press off the shelf and hand-grinds a well-blended assortment of fresh Kona beans. Akira brews the second batch like he’s making love to the coffee—he tenderly checks the water temperature with a thermometer before adoringly sifting the dust from the grind. He gently pours the coffee into the hot water, stirs it with breathtaking devotion, and sets the kitchen timer to ensure an optimal brew time.

As it steeps for a painstakingly exact four minutes, he takes his burnt and over-caffeinated homemade Potion of Heart Palpitations, pours it into his nastiest chipped mug, and takes a long, disgustingly gritty swing.

It’s the worst thing he’s _ever_ tasted.

His caffeine headache vanishes immediately. 

He sips the rest of the cup with a hum, finally at peace with himself.

The timer goes off on the good coffee, the one sanctioned by both God and Sojiro, and Akira pours it all into a family sized thermos. He checks his watch again—thirty seconds left. _FUCK._ He doesn’t bother to put shoes on as he bundles the thermos under one arm, only grabbing his phone and his house keys as he locks up his apartment and shifts his stance into a low lunge to kick at his neighbor’s door across the hall. 

Futaba opens it right as he does, and he pivots through an elegantly contained pirouette to avoid sprawling on the ground. She plucks the coffee from the crook of his elbow with a smooth, devilish smile—a distinctly familiar one, that he realizes with growing horror that she’s picked up from Akira himself—and says “I wasn’t actually expecting you to make coffee for everyone, you stingy, stingy man. You’re officially forgiven for sleeping for twelve hours! I’ll even add 10,000 points to your score.”

“Everyone?” Akira questions, raising one skeptical brow.

“Hello Akira.” Yusuke faintly greets from the bathroom, voice muffled by the door.

“Please stop sleeping in the bathtub,” Akira mutters under his breath.

“Not _sleeping_.” Futaba corrects as she skirts around the cluttered living room and into the tiny kitchenette. “ _Working._ ” She pulls three mugs out of her cabinet, slamming the last one down with excessive force. “And this one? It’s BUTT UGLY, INARI!” 

“Artistic genius is rarely appreciated in its own lifetime.” Yusuke’s serene words float out of the bathroom. “Vincent van Gogh, one of the most influential Western oil painters, did not achieve any sort of professional success until many years after his own death.” 

“Can I have my juice now?” Akira interrupts. 

“What?” Futaba blinks owlishly up at him, paused partially through pouring coffee into each mug. “Oh. Your freshly-strained bog water is in the fridge.” She makes a face and pointedly turns the other way as Akira dives for the refrigerator handle. 

“Ah, the source of my eternal youth.” He exults as he hoists it upward, showcasing it as one would a divine sword proving their rightful lineage to the throne. 

“I can’t believe you really drink that. You’re so gross, Akira.” Futaba's tone drips with blatant disgust.

“Really?” Akira counters. “Who has the best skin and hair in this room? Who’s going to still look twenty-six even when they’re sixty years old?” 

“Ugggghhhh. I don’t wanna look young when I’m that old.” Futaba gathers up all three mugs at once, two in one hand. She shoves a box full of hardware parts off of the living room kotatsu with her foot, and dumps the drinks down in their place. “I wanna look like Sojiro, and then I’m going to stand in coffee shops with my receding hairline and tell the disrespectful youth of the day to order something or get out.” 

Akira clamps down on his gag reflex, closes his nasal passage, and chugs the contents of the plastic cup in one long, continuous sip. It’s _foul_ , but he can feel his charm returning—for the first time since waking up, he truly feels like himself again. 

“Are you done yet?” Futaba asks, setting herself up with a mug and a laptop. “We were supposed to start holding the Phantom Thieves meeting hours ago, so...” 

Akira gracefully seats himself, cross-legged, across from her. “Yusuke, are you gonna sit in on this one?” He calls. 

“Probably not,” says Futaba, twirling a long strand of gradated hair around and around her finger. “Let’s just catch him up later. I wanna talk fast before he starts using the blow-dryer on his watercolors again.”

“Right.” Akira takes his cup of coffee, swirling a small taste around his palate as a sample _. Bright and acidic, with a perfectly balanced split between nutty and spicy undertones. Delicious._ He makes an appreciative noise. “So, Councilor Miura.”

“What evidence did you find in his safe at the party last night?” Futaba’s eyes are sparkling through her oversized glasses as she grins up at him. “Bribes? Hard copy backups of blackmail material? Scandalous photographs? Ooh—solid gold bars?”

Akira suddenly realizes that with the untimely interruption, he **never actually finished opening the safe last night.** His stomach sinks like a stone. How could he possibly explain this to Futaba? _“Oh, I was securing the collateral, when my dearly detested nemesis appeared. The one that killed your mother? Yeah, that one. I got so caught up making goo-goo eyes at him in a closet that I completely forgot what I came there for! Ha ha! Can you believe it? What? You mean you forgive him? And I have your blessing and I’m free to marry him? Awwww, Futaba! That’s so nice of you to say. Please be my best man at the wedding.”_

“Uhhh, Akira?” Futaba waves a hand in front of his face. “Did your stupid aojiru have those brain-controlling fungus spores blended in? Are you a zombie now? Am I going to have to put you down?” 

_Terrible idea._ Akira thinks _. Besides, I told him I wouldn’t say anything, and I don’t intend to break that promise yet. If I just selectively omit a few details...._

He rubs his temples and does his best to look put out. “The heist didn’t end well. The infiltration route and timing were perfect, but...”

“But?” Futaba prompts. 

Akira lets a forced blush crawl up his neck, and buries his head in his hands. “There was this couple looking for an empty spot to sneak away to. When I heard them coming, I hid in the closet, and....”

Futaba’s smile turns unbelievably gleeful, a cat who’s gotten the cream and doesn’t give a single fuck about lactose intolerance. 

“Woooooooah! How long were they at it?”

“Dunno”, mumbles Akira. “At least an hour. They spent a stupid amount of time just _kissing_ each other. Who _falls in love_ in _this_ day and age? I mean, seriously? Eventually, I just escaped through the attic and off the roof.”

He’s lucky that he’s a well-practiced liar and a bastard, and that Futaba is even more of a bastard than he is, because she doesn’t question any aspect of his slightly-edited story. Instead, she sits back on her heels and laughs so hard Akira worries she’s going to choke on her own mug of coffee. Still, seeing her this happy—even if it _is_ at his own expense—makes him grin back in spite of himself. 

She lets out a few more stifled giggles as she cleans her glasses on her sweatshirt. “Wow. Okay. Wow. That sucks. And to top it all off, you weren’t even able to come out of the closet? That’s really sad, Akira. You know, Sojiro and I are here for you. And we’ll always love you, regardless of who you like.” 

_Maybe not._ An intrusive thought worms through Akira’s brain. _I don’t think they pictured Goro Akechi on that list._

But he laughs, good-naturedly, and says “Very funny. Never heard _that_ one before.”

Futaba cracks her knuckles, and then she’s typing so fast on her laptop that Akira swears he can’t see her fingers. “We’re going to need a new plan to get concrete dirt on this guy. It’s gonna be hard to break into his house without the pretense of a party—his security systems are pretty wild.” 

“How about work connections?” suggests Akira. “Starting next week, he’s supposed to be heading some hot-shot transit committee. I can ask Yoshida-san to let me sit in on some meetings and report back.” 

“Could work,” says Futaba doubtfully. “But ffffffffffffFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR _RRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN—_ ”

Her lips move through the phrase “INARI! TURN THAT _OFF!_ ”, but Akira can barely hear it over the incessant roar of the hairdryer. He stands up, grabs the third, neglected mug of coffee from the kotatsu, and excuses himself to the bathroom to take matters into his own hands.

Yusuke's facing away from him, turned towards the tub as he blow-dries his watercolors. His long blue hair is pulled back into a low ponytail, and Akira is hit with a twisting, wordless pang of guilt at how similar the style is to what Madarame once wore. If they had become Phantom Thieves sooner—if they had been able to rescue Yusuke as a child, or if they could have stamped out every influence of his so-called father figure, what would have been the result? Would he have been happier or better-adjusted? Would he still have been _Yusuke_?

He realizes, biting his tongue numb, that he's not actually thinking about Yusuke anymore. After all, the Phantom Thieves rescued Yusuke Kitagawa. For better or for worse, they freed him from his suffering and strengthened his convictions.

_But that wasn't the case for everyone. Akechi had chosen not to be saved._

He checks his phone compulsively. Zero new messages.

Yusuke switches the hairdryer off and turns to face Akira, and the resemblance to Madarame vanishes. His bangs are pinned back out of his face with a set of brightly colored hairclips—definitely Futaba's. He's wearing a formal and expensive-looking tailored three-piece suit over a dark blue silk-patterned tie. Akira dimly recognizes the outfit from a gallery opening last month. Since then, it appears to have been stained with an immeasurable amount of gummy turpentine and oil paint. _Classic Yusuke_.

"Coffee," Akira says, shoving the cup into his hands. Yusuke blinks down at it uncomprehendingly, still sunk halfway into some far-off artistic vision. "Why are you painting in that? Do you want some of my gym clothes?"

Yusuke, after an awkwardly long pause with sustained eye contact, delicately lifts the mug to his lips and sips. "It's a bit cold," he remarks. "But the flavor is significantly above average."

"Thanks," says Akira, biting down on any and all snide remarks that begin with _"It wouldn't be cold if you drank it when it was freshly brewed_ ", because he loves Yusuke and he'd do anything to keep him above a BMI of -13. He prompts him again. "Your clothes?"

"Ah." Yusuke says, and Akira _hates_ how effortlessly poised and sonorous he sounds, even while smeared with paint. He looks like the protagonist of a samurai-reincarnation isekai anime, assuming that said protagonist had been resurrected and stranded in a cramped bathroom half-filled with laptops. "Akira, I must regretfully inform you that this is my only remaining outfit."

He takes another sip of coffee. "While I am touched by your offer, it is doubtful your clothes will fit me properly."

It's true, but Yusuke really doesn't have to say it. Akira stopped growing at age 16 at the glorious height of 5'9". Yusuke, on the other hand, continued to uncurl like an over-fertilized weed, reaching 6'1" by graduation and never fully growing into his gangling limbs. Even now, it's hard for Akira not to think of him at times as some sort of very beautiful, extremely bishounen praying mantis.

"Right," he says, and changes the subject. (He files a note on his mental to-do list to buy Yusuke more clothes before Futaba can—he's had enough of her dubious taste in sweatshirts.) "What are you painting? Watercolors aren't your usual medium."

"Transience", Yusuke says simply. The conviction in his voice is unfaltering. "I have finally completed it."

Akira squints at the watercolor canvas set up on the easel standing in the bathtub. At first glance, it appears to vaguely resemble a shower of summer leaves floating down a stream— or is it the forest itself, viewed from below? A smudge near the left could be a bird, but it's equally likely that it’s a flower, or the reflection of sunlight upon the water, or a fluttering, illusory shadow. _What the hell is this…?_ It would help his understanding if the artwork was painted in any shade of color other than a dingy bluish-grey.

Akira comes to the conclusion that not only does he have no idea what this is, he's also starting to develop a distaste for Yusuke's monochrome phase. He's so caught up in his bewildered analysis that he doesn't notice Futaba has entered the bathroom behind him.

"Wow," she says. "I really, _really_ hate it. I can't believe you've literally painted garbage, Inari. In _my_ bathtub."

"Is it not an adequate reflection of how we consume and discard material objects?" Yusuke counters. "Such is the ultimate form of transience."

"A huge-ass explosion would also be transient, but you painted a trash heap. Boring and gross!" Futaba jabs left of the center of the painting, near Akira's smudge. "And this grouping of over-rendered elements? Totally incongruous. Did you mean to turn this into a landfill? Because that's where this piece belongs."

"Wait." Akira interjects. "You mean you can tell what this is a painting of?"

Futaba and Yusuke turn towards him simultaneously, the same incredulous look of disbelief etched across their faces.

"You mean you are unable to—"

"Do you have _eyes_? It's clearly—"

"I already explained that the nature of this work is 'Transience'. Your lack of comprehension is—"

"Geez, Akira. If you're going to criticize it, at least invoke a valid aspect, like his improper application of Fibonacci spiral—"

"This is an insult I am unwilling to tolerate. Allow me to correct your erroneous assumptions."

Akira throws up his hands and backs slowly out of the bathroom before silently slipping from the apartment. The bickering continues, unabated, behind him.

———

He spends the rest of the day slouched over various surfaces in his apartment, alternating between checking his phone and pretending to himself that he isn't checking his phone. _Zero new messages._ He throws out all the empty takeout containers laying on his couch. For the first time in months, he switches his phone out of silent mode. _You know. Just in case._ He dusts, then sweeps the floor. _Might as well turn my phone off and on again in case any messages didn't download properly._ He restarts his phone. He cleans all of his coffee brewing paraphernalia and sets it out to dry. He recognizes that he's nurturing an unhealthy, obsessive behavior. He puts the phone in his bedroom to charge and closes and locks the door, only to pick the lock open less than two minutes later to check it again.

Fed up with the need to do _something_ before he fidgets himself to death and explodes, Akira collapses back onto the freshly-cleaned sofa and keys in a search for "Goro Akechi" into his laptop's web browser. The first result that comes up— _of course_ —is his Wikipedia page. The second is the public press release on his death, issued a few days after the incident. Shido must have had his hands in it, before his change of heart—the official record states that Goro Akechi died in a police helicopter crash while travelling between cases. A freak accident, body unrecoverable. Comments on the article are disabled by the editor out of respect to the dead. Case neatly closed, the tragic spectacle of teenage death commodified in celebrity form, all loose ends tied up in an appealing bow of _la belle mort_.

The third search result is Akechi's stupid fucking blog.

It hasn't been updated since mid-October, all those years ago. The most recent post, perfectly preserved from the flow of time, is a photo of eighteen year old Goro standing outside the front gates of Shujin Academy. The caption reads:

_Looking forward to an exciting school festival! Due to the constraints of my work, I've never been able to participate in one before._

Akira can see that his 120-watt media-approved smile doesn't extend an inch past his chapped lips. He can _tell_ there's bags under Akechi's eyes, thick dark smudges that aren't fully concealed by correctional touchups. If he pulled off his gloves, would there still be blood on his hands?

_Zero new messages._

He keeps scrolling.

Leblanc's coffee; Leblanc's curry. A photo of Akira on-shift as a barista with his face blurred out. A comment on that post, written a decade ago by a user named **Arsenesible** , that says "Wow. Who is he? Sexiest man I've ever seen." A comment directly afterwards stating that the above user had been banned for inappropriate messages. A photo of the Ginza line gate in the summer rain. Yon-Germain bakery. A television studio. An amusement park, swirling with cherry blossoms. A desk filled with paperwork. A new haircut. A crepe filled with ice cream decorated with a cute animal face. An empty apartment, freshly moved into.

Akira watches Goro Akechi's life unspool backwards through 2016 and doesn't understand where he went wrong.

_Your savior complex is pathetic_ , the well-adjusted part of his brain thinks. _You're hyper-fixating on the one person you couldn't mend emotionally. You're hurt and frustrated that he chose a path forward in life that didn't involve any sort of reliance on you_.

He considers the thought. Indulges it. Gingerly steps into it like a hot bath, stretches out his sore mental muscles and sinks deeper into the ramifications of the idea, the overtly telling influences that it's had on his conduct and personality.

He decides he isn't willing to deal with that level of emotional introspection and shoves it into the brain box of concepts to ignore for another decade. His phone chimes in his pocket.

_His phone chimes in his pocket._

_Holy_ **_shit_** _._

Akira pulls it out and nearly fumbles it onto the floor with how badly his hands are shaking. He swipes to his messages, and—

he left it in my APARTMENT >:UUUUUUUUUU

akira drop off this godless painting at leblanc tomorrow morning or else i s2g

im gonna get him arrested for a cybercrime he didnt commit and hes going to go to jail for 20 yrs and eat regular meals 3x a day and flourish

hate tall people

cant live on this earth anymore. im never asking him if comms r open ever again

He sighs inwardly, and manages to type a brief response—

yeah whatever

slide it under the door. going to bed early

—before rolling over to bury his face in a couch cushion, heaving a long strangled guttural groan of frustration into the scratchy material. When he lifts his head, one of Goro's teenage photos stares at him from his still-open web browser, a secretive smile playing at the corner of his mouth. There's something smug in his expression—something piercing and intimate curdling in his congealed-blood red eyes.

_Fine_. Akira thinks. _If this is the game you're going to play, then I’m not going to lose._

**_The show's far from over._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes….. Things that are one chapter…………………………. Are two chapters. Auuuuuuuughghhghgh (accidentally writes goro akechi out of my fanfiction about goro akechi for a chapter) Whoospies
> 
> I named my P5 protagonist "Monster Truck" and was unnaturally obsessed with the hellish juice bar in Shibuya that sells you ¥5000 ($48!!!!!) stat-boosting health drinks on Sundays, as well as the bakery next door to it in the train station. I went broke for juice and seasonal pastries time and time again. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading! I'm incredibly grateful for the likes and feedback. I've re-read all the comments at least 18 times. (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)


	3. Chapter 3

It's delightfully cool when Akira leaves for work the next morning. The streets are damp from the overnight rain; glittering droplets still sparkle on the leaves of the scrubby bushes planted outside of his apartment complex in the early-morning sunlight. He catches the train line for Yongen a good hour ahead of his usual commute time, Yusuke's stiff watercolor paper tucked carefully into a clear plastic protective sleeve and stowed in his briefcase.

Playing the part of a generic salaryman has always been one of his favorite roles. Even in the summer, with harsh government-sector dress codes relaxed due to the heat, there's something thrilling about escaping scrutiny by becoming a single facet of the faceless, suit-wearing masses. With thick-rimmed glasses, messy hair to hide behind, and a white-collared button up shirt paired with an uninterestingly patterned tie, Akira could become anyone. Do anything. Perform any number of heinous and illegal acts of thievery, and no one who witnessed the crime would retain any genuinely identifiable information about his appearance.

Yongen's only a few stops away from his current apartment. He hops off and pauses first by the bathhouse vending machine to funnel his spare change into a can of Arginade for when he hits the 3 PM workday slump. He greets Haru, who is sweeping the front step of Leblanc, with a wave.

Haru waves back and smiles, luminous as the north star and bright as the rising sun, and Akira feels his heart liquefy into a puddle of goop. It's no secret that he has a huge mushy-gushy soft spot for the last and final member of the Phantom Thieves. Everyone does. Even _Sojiro_ did. When he retired a few years back, a month after Futaba graduated from college, he handed the keys to the café straight to Haru before he headed to the beach for a well-deserved vacation. Akira and Futaba had theatrically moaned and whined at the time, as was their rightful due as Sojiro's cherished idiots, but they both knew instantly without having to once discuss it between them that this was the best possible outcome for Leblanc.

"Good morning, Akira!" Haru greets as he walks up. "You look…." Her voice falters as she looks him over, searching for something to compliment in his utterly bland, intentionally nondescript appearance. "…um, healthy."

"It must be all the vegetables a certain _someone_ keeps mailing to my apartment," Akira replies, face breaking out into a wide grin. He shoves his glasses up his forehead, pushing his bangs out of his face. "Are you open for the morning yet? Need any help with prep work?"

"Usually, I'm more than capable of handling it on my own." Haru hedges, looking anywhere but Akira as she dusts his hands on her floral-print apron and unlocks the front door of the café. "But Mako-chan was unexpectedly called in for work at 6 AM this morning, and I was in a rush getting her ready and out the door, and ever since then things have been out of sorts." She beckons him inside and hands him his own adorable apron printed with sleeping black-and-white cats. "Can you peel carrots and potatoes? Curry's been a big summer seller."

Akira knots the apron in a neat bow at his neck and back, fingers dexterous and nimble. He washes his hands at the kitchen sink and begins peeling the pile of vegetables Haru indicates. Leblanc's full of greenery, as always, succulents and potted ferns at the windows, cheerfully colored hanging baskets with leaves trailing over the edge attached to the rafters. Haru's added a special touch for the rainy season this year—pink and blue hydrangeas are planted outside, and trimmed blossoms stand in vases on the counter and at each table. He inhales deeply, the scents of freshly roasted coffee, cumin, cardamom, and nutmeg swirling into his lungs. It smells like home.

"What else can I help with?" Akira asks, once he makes short work of the vegetables. Haru directs him to onions to chop, apples to grate, and beans to grind before she sits him firmly down at the counter with a mug full of freshly brewed coffee and refuses to let him do anything other than relax. It's perfect—the blend has hazelnut and chocolate notes that melt on his tongue, with a richly bitter finish. He closes his eyes for a brief moment and simply luxuriates in it. "Great work, Boss."

"Oh, stop." Haru giggles. She flushes pink regardless, pleased with her inheritance of the nickname. "Sojiro-san is going to come out of retirement and steal the café away if he feels that you've written him out of the picture, Akira."

"That'll be a sight to see. Makoto can certainly take him in a fist fight, but would she be willing to stoop to such a low level to defend your honor?" Akira takes another long sip, checks his phone for the time, and frowns in disappointment. "I need to wrap up in a few minutes so I can catch the transfer to Nagatacho. Before I forget, I've got art for you." He rummages through his briefcase, slides aside a few busted lockpicks and spare pairs of gloves, and pulls out the watercolor. "It's called _Transience_. Do you have any free wall space right now?"

Haru lifts it carefully and admires it, the hard edge of a veteran art appraiser in her eyes. "This one will definitely sell. I'll make sure to put it up today or tomorrow."

"Thanks," says Akira. "Futaba and Yusuke were both in a hideous fucking mood about this one. The sooner it goes, the better." He shudders, a low convulsion running through his wiry shoulders, and changes the subject. "Do you know when Makoto will be back? Is it just an extra shift, or is it a multi-day trip?"

Haru beams up at him. "Just a one-day trip, I think." She pulls a polka-dotted bento box out of the refrigerator. "I really can't thank you enough for your help this morning, and she won't be able to eat it, so would you like her lunch for the day? You eat too much cheap takeout."

_So much for looking "healthy"_ , Akira privately laments. Before he can open his mouth to respond, Haru's already pressed it into his hands, along with an extra thermos full of Leblanc's best coffee. "Thanks." He says. He gives the bento quick once-over with his third eye, and hastily adds, "Um, please make sure to remove any love notes for Makoto in it _before_ you give it to me."

Haru blushes so violently she almost turns purple, and takes the homemade lunch back from him. She opens it and discretely removes something before returning the bento box to Akira's side of the counter. She turns to look away from him, clearly mortified, and buries her face in her hands. "Ha-Have a good day at work, Akira! You should really get going! Sometimes, the trains here run early, so—"

Akira has always been able to take a hint. He tucks the thermos and the lunchbox into his briefcase and heads for the station.

———

When Akira gets to work, he greets the receptionist with a well-practiced shy smile and swipes his ID badge— _Ren Amamiya_ —to enter the building. He takes the elevator to the eighth floor as he always does, and flips on the lights. As usual, he's the first assistant present in Yoshida's small office space. There's half a dozen emails waiting in his inbox—documentation requests, mostly, forms that need to be scanned and filed and sent off to the proper bureaucratic agency. It's dull enough to make his eyes glaze over. He yawns, lazy and catlike, and waits for the copier to boot up as he cracks every vertebrae in his spine with a disgustingly flexible stretch.

Toranosuke Yoshida's offer of a job had still held when Akira graduated from college, but it came with the caveat of an official pseudonym and an entirely fabricated identity. While never circulated to the public, the classified government files pertaining to "Akira Kurusu" detailed a formally expunged criminal record, a prison stint, an untimely suicide, and, (oddly enough), a _second_ prison stint afterwards. Along, of course, with his status as the leader of the former Phantom Thieves, a vigilante terrorist organization that had been labelled a threat to the safety of Japan.

It certainly didn't make for an appealing resume when one was looking to work for a legislator.

Ren Amamiya was a quiet Public Affairs major with a spotless record who enjoyed crossword puzzles, starched laundry, wearing ties, and detective novels. He was a kind boy, albeit perpetually exhausted and slightly disheveled looking, with dark under-eye circles hiding beneath his oversized glasses. He was never available during the evenings for after-work social gatherings. According to the office rumor mill, it was because he had elderly family members to care for. What a polite and upstanding young man! So respectful. Truly the sort of youth that this country needs at its helm.

If Yoshida had pulled any strings to bring about the sudden, convenient existence of such an ideal citizen, then so be it. Everyone had their secrets, after all.

_Including Councilor Miura_. Akira thought with a frown as the copier jammed itself. The extraordinarily wealthy member of the upper house had risen into power out of nowhere, taking the most recent election cycle by storm. That wasn't a critical damnation on its own, but the startling extent to which he had coalesced his party members behind his personal political views was more than a little concerning. Yoshida had drawn him into his office a few weeks ago and quietly asked Akira to investigate for corruption. Last Saturday's charity gala was supposed to have been the conclusion of his infiltration efforts—he and Futaba knew that Miura was hiding proof of something dirty within his mansion. Akira was supposed to have utilized the gala to find the definitive proof that he was looking for. But with the distraction presented by Goro Akechi, he had foully and carelessly blown his best opportunity.

The copier beeps happily as he frees the last piece of crumpled paper from its innards, and whirs to life to restart the job. Akira can't help but moodily wish that his own work could be restarted so easily. He sits back at his desk, pulls up his legs and crosses his knees over the arms of his desk chair, and opens up a new email message to Yoshida.

From: **Amamiya Ren** <amamiyar@shugiin.go.jp>  
To: **Yoshida Toranosuke** <yoshida@shugiin.go.jp>  
Subject: Transit committee meeting.

Please let me know if it will be necessary to send a secretary to tomorrow's transit committee meeting headed by Miura-san in order to ensure an effective collaboration.

—Amamiya.

There. With the standard flowery, simpering overtones of office emails stripped out, his message for Yoshida is clear. _I couldn't get enough information on Miura. I need to get closer to him. Can you help?_

Akira hits send and goes back to his stack of freshly copied faxes that need filing. It's ten minutes before his scheduled lunch break when he finally receives a response.

From: **Yoshida Toranosuke** <yoshida@shugiin.go.jp>  
To: **Amamiya Ren** <amamiyar@shugiin.go.jp>  
Subject: Transit committee meeting.

I am in agreement with your proposal. Please sit in on all meetings starting tomorrow and report back to me.

I have communicated with Councilor Miura, and we believe it would be mutually beneficial if you were to work side by side with one of his own secretaries. He can answer any of your questions about the committee's decisions. In return, please act as a mentor figure to this young man, as he is a recent hire with less than a year of experience.

I've scheduled a lunch meeting for the two of you to exchange friendly introductions and get to know each other. Spend your lunch break today in the seventh-floor conference room **07-214A**.

Yours,  
Yoshida Toranosuke

_I see_. Akira scowls. _So the unwritten price of this favor is babysitting Miura's incompetent new college graduate. Middle-aged men will jump at every chance there is to make you perform any sort of menial labor for them, it seems._ He inhales slowly and massages the frown off of his face, squishing his cheeks against his lips until his skin twinges painfully. _No more negative expressions, Kurusu. If you charm the new hire thoroughly enough, they'll be bound to let something slip at some point._ And what better way to impress them than with a thoughtful gift? Haru's extra thermos of Leblanc's house blend would make the perfect welcome offering for the poor bastard, especially when compared to the watered-down dirt usually available in the break room.

He reheats the coffee, tucks his lunch beneath one arm, grabs his can of Arginade with the other, and slides down the banister of the stairs to the seventh floor.

The door to the conference room is shut when he gets there. Akira performs an elaborate and unnecessary balancing act with the thermos full of coffee, his soda can, and his pink-and-white bento box to free one of his hands, stacking each item atop the other in a deadly game of Jenga that no other person could ever hope to succeed at. He opens the door and flawlessly sets each of the three items down on the conference table. He's halfway through his planned dramatic entrance, about to look up at the room's other occupant with a devastatingly handsome grin, when he hears a soft, involuntary sort of choked-off noise.

_Life is full of stupid bullshit_ , he thinks as he locks eyes with Goro Akechi for the second time in three days.

"Life is _full_ of stupid _bullshit_ ", Akechi mutters under his breath, almost too quietly for Akira to hear.

The first thing Akira notes about Akechi is that he's wearing an unremarkable beige cardigan over a formal shirt and tie today, the ribbing at the sleeves pulled all the way down to cover his ungloved wrists despite the warm summer temperatures. His hair's still gathered to the side in that stupid little ponytail, and whatever he's done to his eyes, ( _colored contacts?_ ), they're still violet. His slacks are neatly pressed. His dress shoes are polished. Akira concludes that he looks like the human embodiment of the word "lacrosse", and then resigns himself to the fact that he's still desperate enough to fuck him anyway even in the preppy mathlete outfit. 

After shaking that moderately intrusive thought from his mind, the second and _far_ more important thing he notes is that Goro Akechi is Councilor Miura's new secretary. He blinks as his brain suddenly slots several vital puzzle pieces together about what Goro must be doing here, and why he was furtively rummaging through the master bedroom on Saturday night under a false identity. He couldn't possibly be in a similar situation to Akira. Could he?

Only one way to find out.

"Oh, are you Miura-san's secretary?" he asks Akechi, all doe eyes and innocence. "Did the photography gig not work out, or do you have a night job?"

Akechi stiffens almost imperceptibly. For a split second, Akira thinks he sees his eyes narrow, something sickly and calculating in his glistening oil-slick gaze. Then it's gone. Akechi looks up at him, draws an unaffected smile over his thin lips, and maintains an uncomfortable, near-combative eye contact. "I suppose it could be deemed more of a simple hobby, rather than a full time position." He demurs with a self-deprecating laugh. "This is my real job."

"What a shame." Akira responds dryly, taking a seat across the table from Akechi. "The industry mourns the loss of your considerable talent." With absolutely zero tact, he slams the 'make an unwise decision button' with a sledgehammer and adds, "My inbox mourns the loss of the photo you never sent."

"Hmm." Akechi says, placidly nonchalant as he sits at the conference table, crossing his legs at the knee as he takes his own lunch out of his bag. It couldn't be clearer from his monosyllabic response precisely how pleased he would be to ignore Akira for the rest of his adult life. He unwraps a flavorless looking taupe-colored protein bar, only a shade or two lighter than his fugly librarian cardigan, and bites into it with a dust-dry snap. He reaches back into the bag, removes a greyish-white meal replacement drink bottle that vaguely resembles wallpaper glue, and Akira can't look anymore. He can't watch this. His gaze shifts down to his own bento—he pokes around with his chopsticks and pulls out a rice ball perfectly molded in the shape of Buchimaru-kun's adorable panda face. The nori detailing is immaculate, and he marvels at the sheer amount of _effort_ Haru must have put into creating something so cute for Makoto to eat.

There's no way he can eat Buchi-kun.

He just can't eat him. He really can't. He's a cuddly little work of art.

Akira catches Goro sneaking a sideway glance at him, violet eyes overtly judgmental through his silken lashes, and promptly mutilates Buchimaru between his teeth to assert his dominance over the situation. He swallows, mouth sticky, and says, "So is it still Fukiya-kun, or have you moved on?"

Akechi's insincere laugh tinkles like a fucking windchime. "That is my name, yes. And of course, you are—"

"Ren Amamiya." Akira interrupts. He extends his hand in an open invitation to shake it. After an awkward few seconds of Akechi doing absolutely nothing, he retracts it to his side of the table.

"It's wonderful to see you again, _Amamiya-kun_." Akechi sits with perfect posture, hands folded properly in his lap, wallpaper glue forgotten. There's a curious glint in his eyes. "You must have rebounded quickly after being fired from Junes."

"I'm a master at job interviews." Akira lies easily. He picks up three small dessert pancakes with his chopsticks, one after the other. The letters 'I ♡ U' are spelled out across the top in glittering sprinkles. "Versatility of the wild card, and all that. Are you…?"

His question trails off as he notices that Goro's fingers are clenched so tightly against his thighs that they're shaking. _Huh. He's still mad about pancakes?_ Akira takes a deep breath and gently places them back in the bento box. He holds up his hands deliberately, shows Akechi he's unarmed, like he's attempting to tame some sort of feral mountain lion that may or may not be manifesting symptoms of rabies. "Oooooooooookay. So—"

"Let's strike a deal." Akechi says suddenly, cutting him off. "Three questions each. I'm willing to answer truthfully if you do as well."

It's unexpected, to say the least. It's so completely unexpected that Akira forgets for a moment that they're playing one of Akechi's games, that everything he chooses to reveal here will service Goro's own ends, and asks instead, mouth moving faster than his brain can catch up with, "Why did you used to run a blog with rave reviews about sweets if you clearly hate food so much?"

Akechi's eyebrows briefly vanish behind his bangs, and he stares at Akira with a dull, patronizing sense of pity. "That's a rather useless and easily answered question, don't you think? A fondness for trendy desserts is a childish and unprofessional trait, one that made me look softer and convinced the police force to take me as a gimmick, rather than a threat." His gaze shifts into something blunt-edged and icy, an unspoken challenge. "Additionally, visiting cafes and photographing my presence there gave me a foolproof timestamped alibi to rely on when mental shutdowns occurred."

Goro's addition to his answer, so casually tacked on, frustrates Akira to no end. It's a poisonous passive-aggressive mess created solely to push Akira away through the cold-hearted acknowledgement of his own crimes. Every word of his statement was deliberately chosen before it was uttered—Akechi's only gotten more adept at emotional manipulation as he's grown older.

But _still_.

Something sparks low and hot in his blood, something he hasn't felt in a long, long time. The thrill of an argument, of playing the game, of _winning_. Akira's missed this. He _needs_ this. Leaning on his elbows over Leblanc's counter, face far too close to Akechi's, smiling pleasantly to each other as they both lie through their teeth about the Phantom Thieves. There isn't much in the world that he wouldn't trade for the feeling.

If he's going to win, if he's going to keep Akechi in his life, then he needs to play his cards as carefully as possible.

He doesn't take the bait. He doesn't ask what it felt like to snuff out the lives of everyone who crossed Shido's path. He doesn't ask about Futaba's mother or Haru's father. He doesn't ask how it felt to murder Akira itself, how he looked with his glasses blown from his head and his brains painting a trail of vomit-veined chunks across the floor of the interrogation cell. He doesn't ask if he celebrated afterwards, or what order the rest of the Phantom Thieves were slated to die in.

Instead he nods, expression neutral, as if Akechi had merely mentioned it was going to rain today and told him to bring an umbrella. "Did you actually enjoy Leblanc's coffee, then? Or was that another part of your fashionably intelligent teenage detective persona?"

"Have you grown insecure as you've aged?" Goro smiles amicably and sets his nasty vitamin shake back down on the conference table with the full grace and poise of an honored guest at a traditional tea ceremony. "It sounds as if you've developed a not insignificant need for external validation." 

"Not a truthful answer," counters Akira, drawing a line across his own throat with his fingers to mime slitting it. "Try again."

"The coffee's preparation was below average at the beginning of the summer." With a soft cough, Akechi breaks his unrelenting eye contact, tapping his fingers in an off-beat rhythm against the back of his neck and staring fixedly at the clock on the wall. "It improved with time. Had I been interested in the _coffee_ , I would have only gone when Sojiro-san was working."

Akira hums, unduly pleased at this admission. "You laid it on pretty damn thick. If I had figured out what you were up to sooner, I would have poured dish soap in the coffee just to watch you drink it and wax poetic about how delicious it was."

"I didn't realize you had a preference towards the way I acted." Akechi says, shifting his hand to cup his cheek. Akira wonders if it's easier for him to lie than it is for him to breathe, because his next question is "Did you?"

"Did I what?" Akira fires back at him. _Say it. Say_ ** _all_** _of it. Ask the full question you're tiptoeing around the edges of._

"Have a _preference_." Akechi repeats delicately, a steel-sharpened edge beneath his words. "Towards the way I _acted_."

It's fine if he doubles down. It doesn't mean anything, after all. Akira plasters on his cockiest shit-eating smirk. "The 'I'm inexplicably drawn to you and hopelessly in love with you, even before discovering you were my fated rival' personality does rank pretty high on my list…" 

Goro's gaze turns murderous, and Akira drops the charade. "Fine. Do you really want the truth?"

He takes a deep breath, lets it rush all the way into the crevasses of his lungs. He exhales, and something in his heart wrenches.

"We were in Mementos, doing a treasure run." Akira says, voice quiet. "We had all split into teams of two, and I had partnered with you because no one else was in the mood to get stabbed in the back. It happened on one of the lower floors. I don't remember what demon it was; it was just one of those disaster battles where you take an unlucky critical at the start of the fight and then keep getting hit while you're already down. You passed out, and I…" _Did a lot of kick flips off the subway walls trying to shake the shadows tailing me as I ran away, mostly._ "Uh. Not important."

He fidgets unseen beneath the table, bunching the stiff fabric of his dress slacks in the palms of his hands. "What matters is that when you woke up, you were groggy for a few minutes and just lay there with this lifeless look in your eyes. Like there was no point in fighting, or even in getting up or being conscious. Like absolutely nothing was worth it. Like you'd rather be dead. Just you, forever entombed in the depths of Mementos, sprawled out on the ground in your princely little hero of justice outfit."

"Don't give me that _shit,"_ snarls Akechi, lunging across the table to grab him by the knot of his tie. His eyes are burning, hate and rage and bloodlust swirling together in an intoxicating Molotov cocktail, and Akira genuinely can't tell if he's furious with _him_ , or with _himself_. He reaches gingerly upwards, settling his hands over the backs of Akechi's palms instead of against his own neck. It's a sick facsimile of intimacy as he's choked out, hard enough that his vision fuzzes into a kaleidoscopic explosion of colors, hard enough that he gags.

"Don't give me that shit", Akechi repeats, but more gently, this time, and the pressure around Akira's neck finally loosens as he releases his grip. "I don't need your fucking pity."

"But you want it." Akira breathes out in a cracked whisper, a statement in lieu of a question.

Goro Akechi straightens the sleeves of his cardigan, adjusts his tie, and sits primly back down in his seat across the table. "Yes." He says simply. "I do."

"Then," Akira begins, heart catching in his abused throat—

"No." Akechi says. The engine room door slams shut between them. "You've asked all three of your questions, and I have answered them. I believe it's my turn now, isn't it?"

"You only have one question left." Akira clears his throat before he speaks, but it still comes out too hoarse, too raw. He fingers his neck and prays silently for the violence to leave a bruise. "You asked if I had grown insecure—I just haven't had a chance to answer it yet. I did, actually! I am insecure now. All of the time. Certain subjects more than others, but there's one that's the worst by far."

"And that would…?" But Akechi cuts himself off midway through his sentence, shakes his head no again. "I'm afraid I won't be taking your bait. There is a question that I've been saving for quite some time now. It's one of the precious remaining few that I am unable to answer."

He steeples his fingers beneath his chin, levels the full and serious weight of his stare towards Akira. Akira, who's always been a complete sucker for a good melodramatic detective monologue, leans in obligingly.

"Akira Kurusu. What have you done to me?" Goro asks bluntly.

The moment shatters.

"Uh." Says Akira. "What?"

"This is an unbecoming time to play coy. You've had more than enough time to gloat." Akechi's searching for _something_ now, scrutinizing every square inch of his face for a reaction. Akira tries to scrape together his features into something other than 'moderate bewilderment'.

"You caught me," is what he decides on saying. "I rub it in every time I visit your grave."

Whatever Goro's looking for, he doesn't find it.

"You really have no idea." He murmurs quietly to himself. "Was the entire experience unrelated after all?"

"I'm sitting right here." Akira mentions passive-aggressively, sick of being left out. "You're allowed to talk to me."

"I believe that we're done here." Akechi rises to his feet, professional to a fault, and disposes of the sad remains of his pathetic lunch. "The hour is drawing to a close. Don't you have work you need to get back to doing?"

"No," lies Akira, who absolutely very much has work he needs to get back to doing.

Akechi gives him another one of his cryptic little half-smiles, the one with the melancholy eyes.

"Coffee." Akira says, desperate to make him stay for a few seconds longer. " _Good_ coffee. Take it with you. It's an employment gift." He stands as well, presses the thermos into Goro's palms, wraps his pallid fingers securely around it with one hand so he can't return it. With his free hand, he plucks Akechi's phone from the pocket of his pants and texts himself with it.

"How thorough." Is all Akechi says in response.

"We're coworkers." Akira winks at him, coquettish, as he slides the phone back into Akechi's pocket. "Wouldn't want someone to stop showing up to the office because he faked his own death in a freak car crash."

"It wouldn't be a car crash." Akechi says, tone laced with something vaguely ominous. Akira feels a little thrill run down his spine. The thrill doubles when he notices that Akechi _does_ take the coffee with him on his way out, politely closing the door behind him as he leaves.

It’s a lasting high, one that he’s sure will carry him through the rest of the afternoon. Akira hums cheerfully all the way back to his desk. He catches one of Yoshida’s other secretaries squinting at him as he sits down—he’s behaving appallingly out of character for the shy, quiet Amamiya-kun. That’s fine.

He loosens the tie around his neck.

For a single glowing moment, remaining Akira Kurusu is more than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) It's MY fanfiction and I get to push my humongous gigantic Makoto/Haru agenda!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
> 
> 2) The deeper I get into writing this, the more I realize I have no idea what is going on or how anything works. If anything is factually wrong or inconsistent? Got four words for ya: **Don't Worry About It**
> 
> 3) This chapter is dedicated to my sister, who recently let me read all of her Gossip Girl fanfiction from 2009 on fanfiction.net, and in doing so made me realize we have the exact same propensity to overuse adverbs. A beautiful familial connection…..
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read this! Thank you as well to Rika and Ghosti for betaing for me. I owe both of you a blood debt for embracing 13,000 words of my goopy thinkpiece. _(:з)∠)_


	4. Chapter 4

Back at his desk, Akira _itches._ The traces of adrenaline from lunch are still jittering through his system, blood fizzing through his veins as furiously as the contents of a soda can dropped down a staircase. He opens his inbox. He gets through about two and a half flavorless, half-hearted email replies before he has to reposition himself in his uncomfortable desk chair, sitting pretzel flexible and cross legged over his own shoes so he can't keep drumming his feet against the floor. He wishes he were doing cartwheels in the stairwell right now. He wishes he had taken up Ryuji on his offer a few months ago to train for a half marathon. He wishes that Goro Akechi would walk up to his desk and finish what he carelessly hinted at and cruelly started, one hand around his neck and the other on his—

He stands up. Goes to the break room. Makes dishwater sludge coffee. Takes a foul, awful sip. Pours the rest down the drain. Goes back to his desk. Sits again. Stands up. Sits down. Stands up. Checks the empty stairwell. Does a few handstands—the landing's not wide enough for a full cartwheel. Sits down at his desk. Stands up. Goes to the bathroom. Locks the door. Buries his head in his hands and groans.

When Akira makes it back to his desk, he's getting a few odd looks from his coworkers, so that's the end of Stand-Up-Sit-Down and the start of putting some kind of productive thought process into motion. He pulls his phone out underneath his desk and texts Futaba.

Oh wise and all-knowing Alibaba, I throw myself prostrate at the foot of your bejeweled throne…

(°ー°〃)

Pitifully, I beg for the smallest of favors.

ok

start begging then

Akira massages his temples. Futaba following in his footsteps and growing up into a right proper bastard _should_ be endearing, an inherited charm point for him to dote upon. It's downright evil that she only ever bothers properly utilizing her skills to piss him off.

I'll watch all 48 episodes of your esoteric truck driver isekai.

\+ the light novel when he runs over the demon lord??????

Denied.

That thing's at least 400 pages.

correct answer! §(*￣▽￣*)§

u pass

light novels r just VNs for ppl who cant install firmware patches on their PC

if something is compelling enough as plaintext just animate it lmao

like

did u see what they did with the new magical witch detective reboot spinoff last winter

Can you log into the government's servers and make me an undetectable shell account with HR privileges? I need to look up personal information that I don't have access to in the employee directory.

:| <— interrupted

*sigh*

gonna need something to make up for this incredible emotional cruelty………………………..

something like………………………… yakisoba………………………..

Could you act any less subtle in your extortion? Yes, I will pick you up noodles on my way home from work.

done

user: 5fct9nRZ pass: ?Ysg!%JmM^SKs8k4

Akira opens the office task tracking spreadsheet and surreptitiously shifts his open assignments into the other secretaries' to-do columns. With the remainder of his afternoon freed up, he logs into the account Futaba created for him and gets to work. He has a low, twisting gut hunch about Akechi's relationship with Miura. It's a sneaking suspicion at best, but his intuition's never done him wrong before. He pulls up his employee profile and scans it for information.

First, he checks the copy of the government-issued ID attached to Akechi's hiring paperwork. His physical information is mostly correct, but his age and birthday are off—the ID shows an unassuming birth date in late April, almost a year after he was actually born. His eye color is wrong. The ID picture is hideous in the way that all standard-issue photos are, somehow managing to turn the early-20s Akechi pictured limp and greasy in precisely the same way as a potato wedge caught at the bottom of a fryer basket.

Akira notices that the card was issued under the name "Seiichiro Fukiya" six years ago.

_Which means…. what? That was a long time ago. Has he settled down under a singular identity? Does he live an honest life these days? Or is this an indicator that he's got an entire box of fake IDs in his attic? He_ could _keep them right next to the refrigerator full of human organs that he's definitely amassed._

… _Where'd he get this made, anyway? Was it a witness protection program or was it a black market deal?_

He takes the home address listed on file, commits it to memory, and then thumbs it into the appropriate section of his newly created phone contact.

Next is the employment history report. Supposedly, Akechi was hired eight months prior, and started working shortly after the new year. _Right around the time that Councilor Miura began galvanizing his political base and consolidating power. Even Yoshida-san, with all of his experience and political connections, didn't catch wind of any sort of wrongdoing until late spring._

_Knowing Akechi, there's no way those two things are a coincidence._

He taps his fingers idly against the hard laminate of his desk, a staccato pseudo-waltz in miniature _. But if Akechi's presence here isn't a coincidence, then what about my involvement in this situation? He acted surprised to see me both times, but the key verb there is_ acted _. It wouldn't be the first time he's put up a front. There's the matter of his questions, as well—he wants something from me. Whatever it is, it's stronger than pity or absolution. He's made it abundantly clear over the past decade that death was preferable to any sort of reconciliation._

Akira's heart flutters through a sad and extremely pathetic series of twinges before the part of his brain that's not controlled by a small, semelparous marsupial regains the upper hand. _He knows something I don't and he wants something he thought I had. If I want to win, I can't rely on him making the first mistake again._

_Can you even conceptualize what it would mean to "win" in this situation?_ a nasty voice asks from the corner of his mind _. You want him to stay, but you're not capable of processing any of the logistics behind what that would entail. Do you think you'll kiss once and it will solve everything? What about everything that he's done to Futaba? What about Haru?_

Akira removes his fake glasses and rubs the screen overexposure from his suddenly exhausted eyes, watching the lurid bruises of colors bloom behind his eyelids. He closes out of the profile and logs out of Futaba's shadow account. When he signs back into his own, there's a new unread email waiting in his inbox.

From: **Fukiya Seiichiro** <fukiyas@sangiin.go.jp>  
To: **Amamiya Ren** <amamiyar@shugiin.go.jp>  
Subject: Introductions and a follow up…

It was a pleasure to meet you at lunch today. I look forward to our mutual work under Councilor Miura on the transit committee.

I've attached some light reading for you to review before tomorrow morning's meeting. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the legal ramifications of the underpass expansion that will be up for discussion.

If you have any questions, I am more than happy to assist.  
Fukiya Seiichiro

The wistful sense of loss churning side by side with the acid in his stomach vanishes. Akechi, the rancid little pisspot, has included eight unintelligible legal papers, each densely packed with indecipherable jargon. When he adds together their lengths, they span a sum total of over two hundred pages. Light reading? His _ass_. Akira grits his teeth and types out the smarmiest, most passive-aggressive response he's capable of mustering.

From: **Amamiya Ren** <amamiyar@shugiin.go.jp>  
To: **Fukiya Seiichiro** <fukiyas@sangiin.go.jp>  
Subject: RE: Introductions and a follow up…

I deeply appreciate the time you've taken to compile all of this highly useful information—I'll make sure to become an expert on each of these subjects. In doing so, I hope to serve as an experienced role model for recently hired employees such as yourself.

Please contact me if there is anything you find yourself struggling with due to your relative lack of knowledge.

—Amamiya.

He cracks open the first document as he waits for a reply. He can already tell that he'll be up all night reading these and that there's no information here that he genuinely needs to know, but someone's drawn all his blood out through his veins and replaced it with liquid spite.

His inbox softly chimes.

From: **Fukiya Seiichiro** <fukiyas@sangiin.go.jp>  
To: **Amamiya Ren** <amamiyar@shugiin.go.jp>  
Subject: RE: RE: Introductions and a follow up…

You seem quite confident in your own abilities. I look forward to seeing you follow through on your promises.

Yours,  
Fukiya Seiichiro

Apparently that's all it takes to fully commit him. He tears through each of the documents, ripping apart and digesting each at a breakneck pace.

He plies Futaba into his apartment that evening with the siren song of takeout noodles and convenience store ice cream. They've formed a silent pact of never snitching on each other's all-nighters to the health fanatics among the Phantom Thieves, so Futaba quizzes him on bridge height ordinances and the metallurgical particulars of train track composition until five in the morning. She dozes off on his couch at around 5:30—close enough to when Akira gets up for work anyway—so he closes her laptop, sets it on the nearest end table, and tucks her under a blanket with one of his ancient crane game plushies before he heads to the bathroom to shower.

When he makes coffee that morning, it's for three.

The first cup goes on the kitchen table, a post-it note with a blobby little doodle of Futaba captioned 'YOURS' stuck to the side of the mug. The second cup is more of a blood transfusion than a beverage to be savored—Akira pours it into his mouth all in one go and wills away the exhaustion fraying at the edges of his vision. The third cup goes into a sakura-patterned thermos, lid screwed on tightly before it's packed away into his briefcase.

He's lucky enough to get a seat on the train that morning. He spends his commute to Nagatacho using concealer to touch up the bags beneath his eyes and the purpled-over skin near the hollow of his throat. His fatigue runs bone-deep still, a debilitating headache curling up behind his temples like a contented cat. It's all worth it when he arrives at the unfamiliar upper house meeting room and sees Akechi, radiant and resplendent in chino pants, immaculately airbrushed and looking like he's just stepped off a professional golfing circuit.

Akechi catches him staring from across the room and scowls at him, vitriol bubbling in his scathing gaze. The effect is lessened by several orders of magnitude due to the tasteful light-blue polo shirt that he's wearing. Akira skirts around the edge of the table to proffer the thermos full of coffee, and Goro's expression shifts cleanly from contempt to disdain. He eyes the container as if Akira had just lifted a particularly decomposed dead rat for his inspection.

"I see that you've made this," Akechi finally says, crossing his arms. It's a statement, not a question.

"Did you know that the standard gauge for Tokyo's subway and railway systems is 1.435 meters?" Akira asks him. "However, the Keio Line and the Toei Shinjuku line operate at the scotch gauge, which has a width of 1.372 meters."

Goro's eyes narrow, and Akira can see his brain weighting the mental calculus of an exquisitely painful choice. Either he accepts Akira's lovingly crafted drink, or Akira stands there—hellbent on his picture-perfect portrayal of obliviousness—and continues to recite facts about train lines until Akechi keels over dead.

He takes the coffee from Akira's waiting hands. _Good,_ Akira thinks, and he can't help the self-satisfied smirk that tugs at the corners of his mouth. Akechi stares daggers at him across the long conference table for the better part of an hour, but it's worth it.

The empty sakura thermos and the dull steel thermos from Leblanc turn up mysteriously on his desk while he's out during his lunch break.

Akira wastes his afternoon prodding through HR documents, dissecting management trees and company floorplans until he's figured out which shitty little half-cubicle in what building Akechi spends his working hours in. He creeps into the office an hour early on Wednesday morning, laying another gift of freshly-brewed coffee upon the desk in the same way one would leave a reverent offering for a bloodthirsty god. Akechi's workspace is medically sterile in how utterly barren it is. He has no pictures tacked up, no notes, no greeting cards or calendars or whiteboard to-do lists _. Most importantly, he's leaving no clues towards his intentions or actions._ Wednesday's dark red thermos adds a single muted splash of color to the desk. The blend Akira chose that morning is stronger for its lack of sweetness, a full-bodied richly acidic base with woody undertones and the barest hint of wine. He leaves the lid off for a few minutes and wills the robust scent of the coffee to cover the faint underlying stench of disinfectant wipes and bleach that hovers around the empty cubicle.

On Thursday he leaves a framed photo of himself on the desk alongside the coffee.

On Friday the photo is no longer there, so he tacks three more to the wall with push pins. This is apparently the final straw for Akechi when he arrives in the office, as he finally deems it fit to text him—

Stop this.

The coffee? Or the photos?

…

oh. Hang on

_has changed their display name to_

The coffee? Or the photos?

Do you really intend to attempt to win my favor by plying me with cheap gifts?

I mean yeah, kinda

But tbh the main reason is because you look like shit. If you've got eyebags, you get the free coffee treatment

It's house rules

You look like shit, I look like shit, now we can look like shit together while well-caffeinated

I don't care.

Do you have plans after work today?

Akira pumps his fist and whispers "YES!" under his breath before remembering that 1) he's in an office, at work 2) his coworkers have already been looking at him funny all week, and 3) Goro Akechi is most likely utilizing this conversation to determine the best time and location to ritualistically disembowel him.

Somehow he can't bring himself to care. He shoves his glasses up his nose and returns to his messaging app.

Nope, all yours.

How strange. Not even with Okumura-san?

Which is a little _odd_ of a response, perhaps borderline _creepy,_ but then Akira remembers the unfortunate time several years ago where he jerked off to Akechi's Wikipedia page in a fit of desperation. If Goro wants to engage in lightly stalkerish tendencies he's well within his rights to do so.

Friday nights Leblanc is deader than dead

You KNOW this, seeing as it was your favorite time to sit there for hours and beg for free refills on your ¥300 pour over

The day you died, Sojiro said "Lo, the cheapass has finally been defeated," and then hung up his apron and did a little dance on the street outside.

The message comes out ruder than he intended. He can't help cringing when he reads back over what he's just sent. Maybe he was just blustering and posturing, trying to pretend he wasn't overly invested and utterly torn to pieces by what had happened. But to imply to Akechi's face that anyone had _celebrated_ his death—

He quickly edits his message and prays that Akechi won't notice.

The day you stopped showing up to Leblanc, Sojiro said "Lo, the cheapass has finally been defeated," and then hung up his apron and did a little dance on the street outside. ( _Edited Message)_

…

_FUCK._

Hm.

_FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. He saw it. Time to change tactics immediately._

What did you want to do after work?

There's a bar near Shinjuku Station that holds spoken poetry recitals on Friday evenings.

They also distill their own herb liquors.

_has added an attachment._

I've sent you the address. Shall we meet there at 6:30?

And he's fucking with Akira at this point. He's _got_ to be straight-up fucking with him, looping red marionette strings around his own fingers and thumbs and jerking Akira up until he dances. Poetry readings? Herb liquors? No real human person has ever enjoyed either of those—let alone the two of them in conjunction. _Why don't we go to the dentist together, Kurusu-kun? Why don't we get our teeth pulled out one by one with no anesthetics? I find the mental and emotional stimulation thrilling. Wouldn't you agree?_

Of course, he immediately types back—

Sure. See you then.

If this is a challenge, he'll step up to it. If Akechi wants to stand side by side in front of a freshly-painted wall and watch it dry, he'll comment on the level of gloss.

A decade is a long time. He won't be shaken off so easily.

Out of curiosity, he checks the bar's location. It's about fifteen minutes away by transit from Goro's current apartment, which greatly lowers the odds of 'elaborate ruse for wild animal sex on Akechi's couch' and raises the probability of 'Akechi's going to watch him drink a cocktail that costs ¥1500 with leaves floating in it for his own psychological gratification.' Which is still completely doable. He'll even eat the leaves from the empty glass if he has to.

_Game on, Crow._

———

Real life has other ideas.

As soon as he closes his messaging app and puts his phone away the office explodes into a perfect shitstorm. Some tabloid reporter online has just published their magnum opus—the same No-Good Tora accusations as always, but _this_ time with a punchier headline and hip-teen social-media approved slang. Yoshida insists on putting out a public statement for transparency, which means digging up facts and statistics about the policies he's enacted while in office. Akira ends up double-fisting the copier and the fax machine while the second secretary handles archival retrieval and the third fields phone calls and email responses.

He's haloed in an impenetrable stench of hot paper and ink by the time he finally slumps back down at his desk. When he checks his email, the situation degenerates from awful to putrid.

In what has to be the _worst plot twist of all time_ there's a message asking him to proofread the technical details of a transit committee proposal. Despite Councilor Miura leaving the office early that afternoon with a stomachache, the draft review is still due by midnight in order to make sure its budget can be incorporated into next quarter's funding outlines.

"You are a talented and knowledgeable young delegate of Representative Yoshida," gushes the groveling email. "Your in-depth understanding of transit regulations and insightful, thorough questions were a sight to behold at Tuesday's committee meeting. I humbly request your assistance in this manner."

Akira mashes his lips up against his teeth with his fingertips to avoid screaming. If it were solely up to him he'd laugh in the face of this request—voice ringing and bold and brazen in its overconfidence—and then he'd smash the office window and do a backflip out of it, never to be seen again. The email's not addressed to _Kurusu Akira_ , though. It's addressed to _Amamiya Ren,_ who Akira has carefully crafted a personality of watery skim milk for. If Ren were to jump out an eighth story window he'd die of a heart attack before he even hit the ground. He'd certainly never think of disrespecting a superior's tedious request.

_He wouldn't think of passive-aggressively flirting with his stupidly handsome rival by memorizing public-use applications of civilian based maritime law and spouting them all off in front of a room full of politicians, either. Yet here we are._

It's a natural consequence of his own bastard actions. He types an astoundingly generic reply that contains the words "always" "happy" "to" and "help" jumbled about in various sentences, and then he pulls up the brick of legal documents Akechi had emailed him and starts cross-referencing the purpose and scope of each minor law referenced in the committee proposal. When he emails back the first document, he's sent a second. When he emails back the second, he's given a third. When he emails back the third, there's blissful, blessed silence, and then Akira realizes that the office is empty, his shoulders are _killing_ him, and it's nearly 7:45 PM.

Cool! He'd always known that he was going to die prematurely, but he never expected it to happen quite like this. Goro Akechi was the starring actor in most of his more lurid imaginings, to be sure, but he usually found himself fantasizing about more intimate locations than an overpriced hipster bar smacked down directly in the middle of Shinjuku. For instance: his own bed. _Akechi's_ bed. A candlelit, private opera box. Inside of a locked steel vault. The chapel on their wedding day. A prison cell (again). On particularly indulgent occasions, he might even dabble in romanticizing the back alley behind Leblanc. Shinjuku—loud, neon-lit Shinjuku—was never on his list.

He texts Goro:

Running late and just now leaving work. Got smashed by the higher ups on the transit committee since Councilor Miura took off sick. If you need to slit my throat when I get there I have a knife in my pocket ;) ;) ;)

…Who immediately leaves it on read, which is completely fair. Akira messages Futaba as well:

hey if I die tonight on my hot date you get 1/3 of my money, ryuji gets 1/3, and yusuke gets the last third

it's a sum total of like 440 yen but w/e. free train fare

ur dead to me for breaking our name pact

keep ur filthy tainted belongings. i refuse to take handouts from someone who leaves me stranded ALONE IN THE COLD just so he can go have stupid normie sex with some office worker who cant even appreciate that what we had together was beautiful

i hope theyre a serial killer _and_ u get gonorrhea

both?

yea both

if there's a walk of shame involved tomorrow morning I'll grab chocolate croissants from yon-germain and a new can of compressed air from tokyu hands

suddenly several of ur momentous crimes have been forgiven Ψ(￣∀￣)Ψ

if you find my organs in a freezer yusuke has to use them in an interactive sculpture

u wouldn't have to text me this every single time u went out if ur bar for hookups was higher than………. 10m below sea level………………..

what? there's no reception here on the train. missed that last message

im sure it wasn't important. gotta go. Bye

His phone vibrates again as he's pocketing it.

Are you aware that Hegel never genuinely udse the dialectic strategy of thesis and antithesis? It's a ycommon misattribution, and one that I myself was guilty of in the past. alylow me to explain.

"Thesis", the original viewpoint or state of being, must be moved by "antithtesis", an external viewpoint or existence that olpposes it. Over time the two come togethjer and reconcile their differences. this results ni "synthesis", tthe truth of the matter.

However, this school of thought is based on the assumption tnhat ideas ymust be contradicted or opposed by things that come from OUTSIDE te.hm. Hegel's TRUE fundatemanl dialectic was based ogn the premise tfhat all viewpoints or statse of being contain internall contradictions. once the contradiction haws been discoerved, the subject in question iks idssolved mrof its primordial form and reubelit as a more sohistpicated consrctut that contains all of its facxets.

In short: "abstract", tihe inyitial simpiilstc percetpion tof athe lself; "nnegative", thde destructivne negvatoin oif lthat assuymed selfy; and u"concrete", the twrue realizaation of tqhe eenrti slel

what

do yovu understand?

stop drinking the herb liquors

Akechi starts typing, stalls, then stops. He begins again a few moments later—Akira watches the text bubble above his name appear and disappear three more times before he finally goes silent.

The train announces his stop. Akira disembarks, shouldering his way through the densely packed streets and cramped alleyways of Shinjuku. He almost misses the bar on his first pass. The door is unadorned, painted a drab, unassuming brown that reminds Akira of a moth tucked between two great gaudy butterflies. He pulls the door open and strides in purposefully to assess Akechi's self-inflicted liver damage.

Akechi, who is seated on a bar stool, elbows propped on the counter with his hands coyly cupping his face as he _orders another drink_.

"No," says Akira eloquently as he slides into the seat next to him. "Bad." "Evil."

"You missed the poetry reading," Goro states in lieu of a greeting. His eyes are glittering violet slits in the low light.

"Tell me your favorite poem that was recited then." Akira flags down the bartender and murmurs a quiet request for water.

"I," says Akechi, as he deliberately over-enunciates each word with his teeth and tongue to compensate for his intoxication, "hate poetry."

"That's nice," says Akira. The bartender returns, placing a glass of water in front of him and a cocktail glass in front of Akechi. The cocktail is fluorescent, a sickeningly luminous shade of yellow-green that looks as though someone snapped a glowstick clean in half, poured its contents into a cup, and topped it with a pathetically small ice cube. There's some sort of delightful little sprig placed jauntily across the top. It looks exactly like the branch of a Christmas tree, but worse.

Akira swaps it with his water cup faster than Akechi can process his ruse. Goro stares at him in disbelief, lips curling back from his teeth in a half-formed snarl as Akira knocks the entire drink back in one straight shot. It _burns_ going down his throat—it's vodka based, and fucking _hell,_ he hates vodka—but worse still, it's definitely herb infused. Akira tastes rosemary and lavender and the contents of an upscale shampoo bottle. He wishes he had a chaser. He wishes he hadn't given his water to Akechi.

…Akechi, whose hands are on Akira's shoulders. He's wide-eyed now, staring at his own hands questioningly, as if deeply lost in thought as to how they arrived to press against Akira. His hands are warm through the lightweight fabric of Akira's shirt. _Disconcerting_. In a decade's worth of fantasies, Akira's never imagined Akechi with human-temperature hands—only the smooth leather of gloves, or the chill, pallid fingers of the chronically anemic. Something cold and clinical and ruthless.

Bile bubbles up in his throat. It's the vodka. He swallows it back down with his soapy-clean shampoo mouth and squints at the chalkboard of bar specials before ordering the least offensive mixed drink he can find, some sort of frozen raspberry-mint daiquiri. He asks for more water. The bartender turns away, and Goro's hands are still on his shoulders, but now one of them has migrated up the side of his neck to brush the backs of his fingers against Akira's jawline.

"Drink your water," Akira says, before he can say something far stupider like "Please jam your fingers in my mouth".

Akechi's thumb tilts dangerously close towards his lower lip, and Akira has a brief moment of panic that Akechi's played him and their ongoing game by secretly being a mind reader the entire time. But then he pulls back, thumb just barely skimming the corner of Akira's mouth, and says, "I'd rather not."

"Then I'm taking you home," Akira counters, resolutely obstinate. "You're a mess. You're quoting Hegel and drinking _flavored hand sanitizer_."

"And you've just ordered a frozen daiquiri." Akechi says. He stretches his expression into a languid, pulled-taffy edition of his favorite customer-service smile. "Tell me, are you a forty-year-old housewife looking for a divorce?"

"Twenty-six, actually," says Akira. "I really hate my husband. He never lets me watch the good soap operas, and I have to slave away in front of the coffee maker for sixteen hours a day."

"What a lovely ending," Akechi says. "It seems that the Cinderella of this story truly received his just desserts."

The daiquiri arrives. Akira spins the straw around his fingers and over and under his knuckles and thinks.

First and foremost: Akechi is drunk. Akechi is appallingly drunk, bordering on shitfaced, and he's still got one hand on Akira's shoulder, fingers digging deep into the knotted muscle at the base of his neck.

Second: Akechi is the one who invited him here. This was his plan. Something _he_ initiated—the first move he had willingly chosen to make in over a decade.

And Akira, for all intents and purposes, had stood him up.

Suddenly the inebriation made a lot more sense.

He rips the paper casing off the straw and takes a sweet, fruity sip.

"I'm still taking you home," is what he finally says. "I'll hold back your hair while you throw up in the toilet. After that we can play it by ear."

"You should have given up on this situation a long time ago," Akechi says, moving his hand from Akira's shoulder to pull his wallet out from his pocket. "Your stubbornness is one of your most detestable personality traits."

"I can pay," Akira insists, but Goro holds up a hand and he swallows the rest of his sentence.

"With all due respect, _Amamiya-kun_ —which is none, by the way—I highly doubt that our finances are comparable." Akechi's voice is haughty, his posture rigid even as he gently slurs his r's and s's. Akira scowls before busying himself with draining the rest of his drink. It's true—he can't envision any universe where it _isn't_ true, he and Futaba live off of takeout six times a week, Featherman figurines, and shiny new countertop appliances and laptops—but there's no reason Akechi has to say it out loud to his face.

He drinks too fast and gives himself brain freeze while Goro runs his card through the bartender's reader and signs the receipt with the name that isn't his. He's pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth, face scrunched up against the hot-cold spikes throbbing up from his soft palate all the way to his eye sockets when Akechi abruptly stands up to leave.

"Don't rescind your offer," Akira says.

Simultaneously, Akechi speaks: "If you back out now, _I'll kill you_. _"_

Then they leave the bar, and Akira's view of the street outside spins into a tipsy, colorful whorl streaked with streetlights and car headlights and moonlight in the warm comfort of the summer evening.

———

Akechi's apartment is near Yoyogi, about a ten minute walk from the closest train station. Akira could have done it in eight minutes if he were operating at full capacity. With Goro's arm draped over his shoulders and his stupidly long legs and sharp kneecaps banging against his thighs and shins every time he takes a step, it takes nearly twenty.

"Door code," he says to Goro when they reach the apartment building. Goro obliges willingly, lifting his free arm and punching something complicated into the keypad. The lock clicks open. Akira heaves him up over the front step and over his shoulder like a potato sack as he steps into the building.

"What apartment number?" he asks, more of a courtesy than anything else. He's already looked it up, but Akechi doesn't _need_ to know that.

"542," says Akechi, voice muffled somewhere in the fabric of his shirt. "I hate your detergent," he adds as a venomous afterthought.

"Try a little harder," Akira wheedles as he calls the elevator. "Come on, you can do it. Go after my hairstyle or my shoes or my height."

"In a minute," says Goro, and he closes his eyes. 

Overall, Akira would formally rank the situation as the worst infiltration attempt anyone's ever made. He shifts Akechi so he's slightly less upside-down, frees one hand, and picks the lock to the door of his apartment. It's pitch-black inside. Something itches at his sixth sense—an incessant drumming against the edges of his consciousness. _Security system. Where?_

…There. Across the room. A small red light. Akira easily avoids the furniture in the darkened room, pries off the plastic casing, and shorts the power wire. He traces his path back to the front door, fumbles for the overhead light switch, and then finally dumps Akechi into the first chair he sees.

The apartment is minimalistically pristine. A dark leather sofa, a matching armchair, and a low glass table are arranged over a cream-colored carpet. There's a bookshelf—nearly empty, and a tv stand without a television. To the left is a kitchenette, counter neatly devoid of appliances. _It doesn't look lived in_ , Akira thinks to himself _. Does Akechi really spend his time here? Or is this—_

On the chair next to him, Akechi leverages himself into a sitting position. Akira snaps out of his thoughts.

"Okay!" He says with forced cheerfulness. "I'm going to get you a glass of water and you're going to drink it."

Akechi lets out a beleaguered, long suffering sigh before he finally opens his eyes. "There's tea in the cabinet," he says. He swims to his feet, stumbling against the side of the chair and catching himself against the wall before he adds, "Stay out of the bathroom for the next few minutes."

Akira busies himself with rooting through the kitchen cabinets while Goro violently upheaves the contents of his stomach into the toilet. There's a few boxes of tea. Protein powder—unflavored. Granola bars. A half-eaten loaf of bread from Yon Germain. Ready-mix instant coffee, which Akira throws into the trash as soon as he sees it. He finds cups in the rightmost cabinet, microwaves hot water from the sink, and plunks herbal tea bags in to steep. On a whim he checks the refrigerator. There's no human organs, but he does find an unfinished takeout container of curry in a plastic bag.

He throws that into the trash too. It's a bit of a tipsy drunken power trip, but he hasn't been making coffee and curry for as long as he has to lose Akechi's affections to some…. some…. _no-name restaurant chef_. How _dare_ he.

The toilet flushes, and Akira moves guiltily back to the couch with both cups. He sets them down on the table in front of him. He can hear Akechi brushing his teeth in the backroom, clean and well-practiced and methodical. There's the sound of swishing and gargling followed by more running water. When Akechi finally re-emerges from the bathroom, he looks significantly more composed. He crosses the room silently, taking a seat on the couch next to Akira and lifting the mug of tea in his hands. He must have taken his contacts out, as his irises are red again—old red, dull red, the color of congealed blood and fresh scabs.

"Akira Kurusu," says Akechi softly. "I believe we should talk."

His tone of voice is enough to sober Akira up instantly. It's harsh, but more importantly, it's _genuine._ There's nothing saccharine or plasticine about it, and it scares Akira shitless.

"Okay," he says. "Uh. Sure. What about?"

"The fact that I loathed you for a long time," Akechi says, staring down into his mug. "You were a foil to everything I stood for. When I used my power exclusively for my own ends, you used yours to help others. And while I swore hate and revenge, you vowed to reform society for the sake of your own truth."

He pauses to set his cup back down on the coffee table before continuing. "Even after everything that has come to pass, there's still a large part of me that despises you. Your confidence, your bearing, your unfaltering recalcitrance. You remind me viscerally every day of my life of what I will never have and what I am incapable of becoming."

Akira opens his mouth to interject, but Goro holds up his hand. "Let me finish. I would have preferred that our paths never crossed to begin with. But since they have—and because I do not plan to see you again—I may as well admit my true feelings on the situation."

"Is now really the best time?" Akira begins carefully. “You’ve been drinking.” Goro stares at him, tight-lipped, with an expression that can only be read as _no shit, you fucking moron_. Akira swallows heavily and shifts tactics. 

"Look. Whatever your feelings are, I'd be happy to listen to them. I always have been. I always will be."

Akechi nods in affirmation, pulls back, and socks Akira clean across the jaw. It's a white-hot explosion of pain—Akira, stunned, barely manages to roll with the punch and to twist his head and shoulders alongside the blow to keep from being knocked off the couch onto the floor. Black spots bloom across his blurry field of vision. He reaches his hand up to gingerly massage his jaw, and Akechi knocks it away, slotting his own hand where Akira's was. He runs the fingers of his other hand through Akira's hair and yanks _, hard,_ pulling Akira into a somewhat dazed kiss. 

Akira can't really muster any thoughts other than _holy shit_ or _holy fuck_ , so he lets his lips part encouragingly and wraps his arm around Akechi's waist as he kisses him back. Akechi's mouth is warm and wet and possibly the cleanest thing he's ever tasted, all toothpaste and mouthwash and mint tea. _Goddamn fucking mathlete._ Being kissed by a man in a pullover cardigan and khaki pants should be an automatic turn-off, and yet it somehow isn't—Akechi's pressed up flush against him, chest to chest, heart beating inches from his own and it's been _way_ too long since Akira's last had sex. It's been so long since he's had sex that he can't even remember when the last time he had sex _was_. Which is bad news for him and his rapidly hardening dick, and good news for Goro Akechi, who's moved himself over his lap at some point, he can't really tell when that happened—

Akira disentangles himself from Goro the next time he comes up for air, shifting back to lean against the arm of the couch. "Ok. Admitting your feelings. That was more of a demonstration than a conversation. Can we pause and talk this over?"

"No," says Akechi shortly, loosening Akira's tie from around his neck and undoing the buttons of his collar. "I've already made my position clear and said everything that I intended to say. If you want to fuck, then _shut up_."

And _oh,_ that's a challenge if he's ever heard one. If he wasn't hard yet, he sure as shit is now. Akira's pressed up against the arm of the couch, back nearly bent over the cushion; Akechi is hovering over his lap as he straddles him, balancing on his shins barely out of reach for Akira to grind up against. Even as he speaks, Akechi's deft fingers are still working his way down Akira's chest, pulling the buttons of his shirt open inch by tantalizing inch.

Akira slides his hands up against the back of Goro's neck and into his hair, tugging his tiny ponytail loose to card through his fingers. He flashes his most devilishly heart-wrenching smile. "Why don't you make me?"

Which is either the wrong answer or the right answer, depending on how he examines the situation. Wrong, because Akechi stares down at him derisively in response, as if Akira were the clump of hair clogging his shower drain. Right, because he surges over Akira like a wave regardless, ripping the last few buttons clean off his shirt and crashing down on him in a kiss that's more teeth than lips. Akira feels Akechi nip at his bloodied lip and bite, _hard_ , and it hurts, it's exquisite, it's enough to make him cant up his hips from the couch and seek the friction of grinding up against Akechi's dick even as Akechi pushes him back down with an iron grip against his thigh.

He's not quite fast enough—Akira gleefully realizes that _he's hard too_. He can't help the smirk that curls across his lips.

"You're enjoying yourself, aren't you?" he asks. "How long have you wanted to fuck me for?"

And Akechi—known _mass murderer_ Goro Akechi—flushes the dainty pink of a summer sunrise in a rose garden in the split second before he's able to compose himself. He sneers down at Akira contemptuously. "Less than fifteen minutes."

"Uh huh," says Akira, and he leverages his elbows against the couch and flips them over in an acrobatic maneuver no one with a spine should be able to accomplish. Akechi blinks up at him in shock, hair fanned out nearly past his shoulders, and he looks so raw and vulnerable that Akira feels it like a punch to the gut. It's entirely subconscious when he leans down to kiss him tenderly—animal brain at its finest, or some long-rotted goopy prince charming persona he forgot to sell off to the twins ten years ago.

The strangest part of it all is that Goro submits to it.

When Akira finally pulls back, heart sloshing messily up into his throat, he says "I'm going to suck your dick now." Akechi makes a muted nod of affirmation, eyes wide and a dusty blush still lingering on his cheeks. Akira gets down to his knees on the floor. He brushes his bangs out of his face—mostly for dramatic effect—and when Akechi sits up, swinging his legs down off the couch, Akira settles himself in between his shins and drags down the zipper of Akechi's horrid khaki pants with his teeth before undoing the button at the waistband and pulling the pants down his pale thighs along with his boxers.

And goddamn, he _is_ hard, and that's a dizzying swirl of triumph and arousal in and of itself. Akira wraps his fingers around Goro's cock lightly at first; he thumbs over the tip with the barest ghost of pressure and Goro lets out a soft, half-strangled little sigh.

"Good?" Akira asks, pulling back a few inches.

" _You_ look good like that," Akechi responds sharply, having seemingly recovered from his scant few seconds of bottoming. "On your knees. It suits you."

"I look good anywhere," says Akira, and he spits into his hand and gives Akechi a few lazy pumps to slick things up before taking him into his mouth. Akechi makes a sort of gorgeously unhinged noise in response before Akira sinks deeper, working Akechi's cock over with his tongue until he feels it hit the back of his throat. He hums when it does, pausing briefly to wink up at Akechi before beginning his efforts in earnest.

Maybe it’s been a long time for Akechi too. Maybe he _has_ fantasized about this—about finally getting Akira to submit to him, forcing him to his knees in front of him, or about fucking his throat until he finally shuts up. Maybe Akira spent too much time during college giving blowjobs. Whatever the case, it doesn't take long before Akechi tenses up, hands threading their way through the soft waves of Akira's hair and clenching into fists as he comes down the back of his throat with a half-strangled moan. 

Akira swallows it easily, pulls back off his cock with a wet pop and wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand. His lips are swollen and his cheeks are flushed, something bright and hot still singing through his veins. Every fluid ounce of blood in his body feels like it’s throbbing through his dick, which is still straining against his dress pants. It’s stupid of him, really, he shouldn’t even be _wearing_ pants right now—

He makes delicious, delirious eye contact with Goro as he undoes his belt and pulls down his zipper. Goro’s breathing shakily, sweaty hair falling into his face, and he’s so far from his usual state of perfect composure that if Akira could commit a single image to his memory with picture-perfect crystal clarity he would choose this solely so he could jerk off to it for the rest of his life. 

“So,” says Akira, and holy _shit_ his voice is _wrecked_. He coughs to clear his throat. “Is this going to be a reciprocal affair, or was that all that you wanted?”

“Get off the floor,” Akechi says in response. Akira rises to his feet, slipping out of his pants with devious grace as soon as he’s fully standing. Akechi gestures with his thumb to the bedroom. “I’m not paying to have any stains you leave on the sofa cleaned. Bed. Now.”

“I love you too, Akira-kun,” rasps Akira as he discards his unbuttoned shirt onto the floor next to his pants. “I’ve yearned after you for countless years.” He waltzes insolently through the door, turning on the lamp before laying himself out like a delicacy across the bed. “Now that I’ve come in your mouth, I’ll never be able to fuck anyone else."

"Keep your disturbed fantasies to yourself," Akechi murmurs as he settles himself over Akira. He presses his lips to Akira's temple, the lobe of his ear, his jaw, his neck. Akira lets out a small involuntary shiver in response, and Akechi smirks, pleased, before he finally— _finally_ —hooks his fingers underneath the waistband of his boxers, drags them free of his legs, and takes Akira's achingly hard cock in his hand.

" _Fuck_ ," Akira groans, and then he finally—blissfully!—stops thinking as Akechi strokes him to completion with his elegant fingers. When he orgasms, he feels like something's being wrenched out of him—his heart, perhaps, or the full contents of his thoracic cavity. He feels as if he's been run over by an eighteen wheeler. It's a solid ten seconds before he remembers how to _breathe_ , and another twenty after that before he's able to refocus his eyes on Akechi's unduly self-satisfied face.

"Not bad," he says hoarsely, because Goro looks almost _too_ smug, and Akira's nothing without his spiteful competitive streak. "I mean…. it was pretty okay. I'll clean up later, I'm going to sleep now."

Then he rolls over, presses his face deeply into Akechi's gorgeously Akechi-scented pillow, and tries to pretend that he isn't passing out because he liquified his entire brain and ejaculated it out of his dick. 

———

Akira wakes up twice that night.

The first time it's still dark, moonlight pooling through the window and filtering past the slats of the blinds to cast faint stripes across the bed. There's a comforting weight curled around his back. He vaguely registers an arm near his waist, a hand on his shoulder, and soft, steady breathing against his neck. A few strands of hair are caught in his mouth.

They don't belong to him, so he spits them out and goes back to sleep. 

———

The second time Akira wakes up it's much later. The apartment is empty, dead silent save for the faint sound of his phone rattling against the wooden floor of the living room as it buzzes. _Probably Futaba_. He finds his underwear crumpled at the foot of the bed and pulls it on along with the previous night's shirt before sitting down on the couch to check his messages.

akira

stupid little man

wake up, now

dont make me call u

i have phone anxiety and i WILL cry

then …. youll be sorry

akira

akira im giving yusuke all 440 yen in ur bank account

akira hes not spending it on train fare hes going to familymart and buying a hotdog

oh god

akira u better wake up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

plz wake up

akira….

I'M HERE.

its about time (；′⌒`)

What is it? Did something happen?

yea. uh

look. i dont really know how to say this. plz just come home asap

councilor miura was found dead this morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Shows up three months later with a smoothie) Hey
> 
> I accidentally gave myself hell brain by letting this ferment for too long, so I'm going to be putting this WIP in the drawer for a bit and writing oneshots with ZERO continuity instead until I can unlearn whatever weird anxiety I gave myself by re-reading my own writing too many times. 〒▽〒 
> 
> Thank you to Diana for foaming at the mouth and repeatedly hitting me over the head with a brick until I finished writing this!! This chapter would not exist without you. However, this update was also severely delayed because I spent two and a half months playing Neopets after you reintroduced me to it. **You are your own worst enemy.**
> 
> FINALLY: you know when you cook bacon and afterwards you have a disgusting pan filled with leftover grease that's a huge inconvenience to dispose of? [I have a twitter account](https://twitter.com/ShadowCathedraI)


End file.
